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MYRA KELLY 

From a photograph hy Ilneseler, Philadelphia 


HER LITTLE 
YOUNG LADYSHIP 

BY 

MYRA KELLY 

Author of ‘‘Little Aliens/' “Little Citizens.” Etc. 


NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1911 





Copyright, xqii, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Published Q«l»ber, igzz 




*/ 

©CLA293916 



TO 

ALLAN MACNAUGHTAN 


March Thirty- first 
1910 











HER LITTLE YOUNG LADYSHIP 


/ 


CHAPTER I 


“OEVEN o’clock, sir!” said the correct and 
kU punctual James, entering his master’s room. 
“Seven o’clock, if you please, my lord.” 

Lord Gresham turned and looked at his faithful 
servitor. Experience had taught him to detect the 
presence of information in James. He detected 
it now and lay back with a smile. 

“Go on,” said he. “What is it?” 

“We can’t stay ’ere long, sir,” James burst out. 
“You remember your dinner last night?” His 
lordship nodded. “Well, your breakfast bids fair 
to be worse. The proprietor as acts always as 
barmaid is actin’ now as cook. I saw queer things 
done with food by the blacks in Virginia, but never 
did I see or hope to see anything like what that 
man Kenny is doing with the ’am and the porridge 
— disgustin’, I calls it. And in a country they ’as 
the impudence to call New England. 

The occupant of the best bedroom of the only 
hotel in Edgecombe, Connecticut, laughed reassur- 
ingly. “It can’t be worse than dinner was,” he 
3 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

pointed out. “Nothing could, you know. Was 
he responsible for that?’^ 

“No, m’ lord. Dinner was done by the cook, 
but after dinner words passed between ’er and the 
proprietor. They was on the subject of more 
flies than currants in the rice pudding, as your 
lordship knowed at the time. Mr. Kenny’s words 
was moderate in the circumstances, but she was in 
an unreasonable state of mind through ’im having 
earlier in the day smacked her face with a leg of 
mutton. Your lordship remembers the leg of 
mutton ?” 

“I do,” answered Gresham. “It was an atro- 
cious leg of mutton.” 

“Well,” James continued, “she has went; and 
the question now remains, what is your lordship 
going to eat, and how am I gbing to get it ?” 

“You know perfectly well,” laughed his master; 
“there’s no question about it. I shall live on the 
fat of the land, and you will get it for me as you 
always do somehow. We can’t leave this place 
immediately, but I can promise that we sha’n’t 
stay long. Get the hot water, and while you are 
down-stairs ask a question or two about a gentle- 
man called Forbes — John Forbes — he grows to- 
bacco about here. He’s the man I’ve come to 
Edgecombe to see.” 


4 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

James vanished obediently, but in the hall, 
which was pervaded by the atmosphere of dead 
chops and long-ago dough-nuts, he allowed him- 
self the mutinous hope that John Forbes was dead 
or away or otherwise invisible. 

James was, in fact, rather bored by the whole 
journey. He was much older than his present 
master, and in former services he had embarked 
upon travels as various as they were hazardous. 
He had travelled across continents in search of a 
lion or a lady, a beetle, a book, or even buried 
treasure, and these incentives he had come to 
understand. He had even been enthusiastic in 
the quest of the lady and the beetle. The lions 
and the buried treasure had not appealed to his 
matter-of-fact imagination. But this quest of 
young Lord Gresham’s was even less to his taste. 
Why should a young man of wealth, position and 
large property abandon the comfort and the pleas- 
ure of his domain to travel incognito from one un- 
interesting place to another; spend his days with 
uncouth overseers; endure discomforts of mos- 
quitoes, privations and malarial fever, simply to 
verify or to obtain at first hand knowledge which 
was to be found in books. Knowledge of to- 
bacco! James utterly despised tobacco except in 
its proper places. These he considered to be 
5 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

smoking-rooms, tobacco-shops, pipes, cigars and 
cigarettes. He took no interest in its preliminary 
stages. Also he took no interest in the impover- 
ished tenantry on his master’s estate. He re- 
garded them with an impatient disgust, and felt 
debased by the knowledge that it was for their 
sake, to supply them with employment, that he 
and Lord Gresham had spent months in unhealthy 
towns in the southern states of America, investi- 
gating, listening, taking notes. He had comforted 
himself through weeks of slow boiling discomfort 
by the anticipation of this visit to New England, 
and now, on the morning after their arrival in this 
bourn, he was forced to admit that the change 
was not for the better. 

But the incognito which Lord Gresham chose 
to assume was what rankled most sorely in his 
British rank -and -title -loving mind. He was 
treated as the common servant of an ordinary man, 
and he did not enjoy the experience. It hurt his 
pride. He was the valet of a peer of the British 
realm, and the state and formality which the mas- 
ter relinquished so easily was dear and almost 
essential to the man. In public he obeyed orders 
and dropped his master’s title, but in private he 
still affected forgetfulness, and revelled in ‘‘my 
lord.” 


6 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

He hated democracy, and in the democratic 
economy of Mr. Kenny’s establishment all the 
guests, male and female, servant and master, dined, 
supped or breakfasted in one hungry assembly 
and in one fly-infested dining-room. James met 
this intolerable situation by choosing a table dia- 
metrically opposite to that at which his master sat. 
He was close to the opening in the wall through 
which the food made its appearance, and he rigidly 
inspected every dish before allowing the haughty 
young woman who served as waitress to lay it 
before his master. Even this oversight sometimes 
failed to satisfy his care, and he would thread 
the inconvenient maze of chairs and oil-clothed 
tables to impart grave doubts as to the youth of 
the eggs and grave warnings against the stewed 
prunes. 

“They keeps them from week to week, m’ 
lord,” he whispered. “What isn’t eaten one day 
they puts back into the stew-pan and ladles out 
the next. They put the tea in cold water and then 
brought it to a boil, cooking the eggs at the same 
time and in the same receptacle. I wouldn’t have 
much to do with them, sir, if you was to ask my 
advice. The bread ain’t so bad, it came down 
from the city on an early train, and the milk 
was fresh this morning. I saw them milking the 
7 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

COW. So if you was to ask me what you’d 
better breakfast on, I should answer * Bread and 
milk.’ ” 

Upon these frugal elements Lord Gresham was 
concentrating his energies when James, having 
finished his own repast, reported for orders. 

“It seems to be the general opinion, sir,” said 
he, “that this ’ere Mr. Forbes is the most import- 
ant man any place about ’ere. I mentioned it to 
Mr. Kenny as ’ow you had a letter to ’im, and he 
said as that he guessed as much, and then he 
guessed the letter would about end us here. He 
showed me Mr. Forbes’s house — you can see it 
plainly from the door. High on the hill it is, very 
large and very white.” 

“I noticed it,” his lordship answered. will 
stroll up there some time this morning. Did you 
understand what this man Kenny meant by saying 
the letter would finish us here ?” 

“I did not, my lord,” James made reply. “I 
don’t always understand what these ’ere natives 
are saying.” 

“ I wonder what he meant,” pondered Gresham. 

“Couldn’t undertake to say, my lord, I am sure; 
but this I did understand, they all expect a very hot 
day, sir. They haven’t had a drop of rain since 
the last of May, and here it’s the nineteenth of 
8 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

June: an awful climate, sir, but I should say, 
quite good enough for them that lives in it/’ 

An hour later when Lord Gresham, disregard- 
ing the warnings of his host and the remonstrances 
of his servant, fared forth into the glare of Edge- 
combe’s main street, he sympathised sincerely 
with James’s desire to shake its dust from his feet. 
But the Edgecombe dust, after nearly three weeks 
of drought, was not to be shaken off. It rose in 
clouds about any moving thing. Not even a dog 
could cross the road without raising it in dense 
volumes, and when an automobile full of shrouded 
figures tore its way past Gresham, he swore fluently 
as he choked and strangled on the footpath. 
Fortunately, the distance to the white house on 
the hill was not great, and it was with a sigh of 
relief that he turned in at its gate and left the road 
behind him. A few steps brought him to an arch 
in the hedge which screened an elaborate garden. 


9 


CHAPTER II 


A BURNING sun high in a cloudless heaven 
was doing its best to ruin everything in the 
garden. It is a way such suns have in the “hot 
spells’’ which frequently disfigure the last week of 
May in the New England climate. But only the 
keen eyes of a gardener — and a disgruntled one — 
could have detected that ruin was hovering near 
the beds and bushes over which Reuben Sands 
shook so depairing a head. 

To the hot young Gresham the garden was a 
lovely spot. Its winding paths shaded by lilac 
and syringa, by fresh-leaved maple and by solemn 
evergreen, afforded a most welcome relief from the 
heat and glare of the road. Between the garden 
and this road lay a stretch of lawn; between the 
garden and the house the grass appeared again; 
so that none of the soil and turmoil of the highway 
could reach the vine-hung porches. All this ex- 
panse of green and flower sloped somewhat steeply 
upward — hence the winding of the paths — to a 
large rather ungainly house. To have held Queen 
Anne’s architects responsible for the eccentricity 
of bay-window, chimney, dormer, turret, porte- 

lO 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

cochere and balcony which it presented to the 
blazing sun, and the dusty road, would be to add 
an undeserved enormity to a not too brilliant reign. 

Lord Gresham discerned the bent back of 
Reuben Sands, who was arranging a piece of can- 
vas tent-wise over a bed of newly transplanted 
pansies, and fared determinedly toward it. 

‘‘Is this Mr. Forbes’s place?” the stranger 
asked, and Reuben stood suddenly erect, so sud- 
denly indeed that the tent collapsed and the 
pansies’ parasol had like to be their winding-sheet, 
for though Reuben hated and dreaded droughts, 
he hated and despised “dudes,” and the voice 
which fell upon his ear was certainly, according to 
his category, that of a dude. So he dropped the 
canvas and turned slowly. His eye corroborated 
the verdict of his ears. Never had he seen a more 
perfect specimen. 

It was a tall dude, and, to unprejudiced eyes 
perhaps, not ill to look upon, though it was clothed 
in garments which would have been trying to 
Apollo. These were in colour a cross between a 
mustard and a linseed poultice; in texture they 
were warm and fuzzy; in shape baggy; and in their 
owner’s calm conceit they were absolutely the cor- 
rect thing with which to impress the eyes of be- 
nighted America. 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Oh, I say now, that’s too bad, you know,” the 
voice went on, when its owner saw the havoc his 
arrival had wrought. “We must have that up. 
Here, I’ll give you a hand.” 

He gave not only the promised hand but his 
whole attention and dexterity, and Reuben was 
somewhat mollified. The stranger’s next question, 
however, reawakened all his contempt. 

“Is Mr. Forbes in, do you know.^^” 

“In?” repeated Reuben. “Is Mr. Forbes in? 
Say, do you know what time of day it is ?” 

“ Eleven,” answered the stranger, looking at his 
watch. 

“Eleven,” corroborated Reuben, looking at the 
sun. “And do you know what day it is ?” 

“Thursday,” said the stranger promptly. 

'‘Well,” answered Reuben, expectorating heart- 
ily, “when you find Forbes home at eleven o’clock 
on Thursday morning or any other week-day, 
you’ll find a dead man, that’s all. Do you sup- 
pose he’s a loafer?” and his eyes, as they strayed 
over the young man beside him, seemed to mark 
the inspiration of his last words. 

“But if you want to see him,” he continued, 
“you’d better go right on up to the house, they can 
tell you more about him there. Mis’ Forbes is in, 
and I guess Dot is too. She was out here a minute 


12 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

ago gathering flowers, and she ain’t had time to go 
out since.” 

Acting upon this advice the stranger mounted 
the wide steps and noted with approval the cool- 
ness produced by the creepers and by the recent 
sprinkling of the porch. There was no sign of 
life, but he noticed a table piled high with freshly 
cut flowers, those to which Reuben had alluded, 
he surmised. The door was open, and, as he rang 
the bell, he was struck by the beauty and good 
taste of the cool-looking empty hall. He was just 
beginning to wonder whether his effort with the 
bell had produced any effect, when a swinging-door 
at the far end of the hall burst open, and a girl 
entered with the peculiar twisting motion which 
swinging-doors impose upon those carrying, as she 
did, a large tray. Flower-jars and vases of all 
sizes were set out upon it, and the stranger realised 
in the act of taking off his hat that this was a lady, 
a beauty, and probably ‘^Miss Forbes.” As she 
came toward him with a little smile of interroga- 
tion he put this last surmise to the test. 

‘‘Miss Forbes ?” said he, and the “dude” voice 
which had enraged Reuben seemed soft and pretty 
to her unprejudiced ear. 

“Yes,” she answered as she set her burden be- 
side the flowers. “And you,” she went on, 
13 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Stretching a cordial hand to him, “you are Cap- 
tain Gresham. We have been expecting you. 
Your friend and ours, Mr. Elliott, wrote to dad 
and told him you’d be here some time this month 
or last; so you see we have been looking for you 
quite a long time.” 

“And I should have been here long ago,” the 
gallant captain responded, “if I had known — 
what I know now.” 

She caught the implication instantly and laughed 
at it with an amazing frankness. “My father 
will be here presently. You had much better 
wait here for him than try to find him at the mills. 
It is so noisy and dusty down there, and so heav- 
enly quiet up here.” 

“Heavenly, indeed,” Gresham answered. 

Mr. Forbes did not return for nearly an hour, 
and during that time Dot discovered that Gresham 
had seen three years’ service, hated London, had 
been to Madame Tussaud’s, loved the country, 
owned some land and intended to devote himself 
for the next few years to the improvement of his 
estate and his tenants. 

“That’s the reason I’m here, don’t you know ?” 
he explained. “When I talked to Elliott about it 
— nice old chap, Elliott, don’t you think ?” 

“An old darling,” Dot agreed warmly. 

14 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

*‘That is what I think. Well, Elliott advised 
that I should try tobacco. It grows, he says, on 
any soil, and employs any amount of unskilled 
labour — sounded just the thing for my chaps — 
they are unskilled enough for anything. So I 
came over here to see how the stuff is raised and 
all that sort of thing. Been to Virginia. Spent 
a month there and Fve almost decided to give 
the thing a trial; but Elliott strongly advised my 
seeing Mr. Forbes, since the climate here is more 
like ours at home. Elliott says he can put me up 
to no end of dodges if he likes.” 

“Oh, he will, don’t you worry,” she laughed. 
“There is nothing he loves so much as teaching 
people about tobacco — ^why, he even taught me.” 

“About tobacco ?” 

“Yes, about tobacco. You see, I am with him 
quite a good deal, and so he talks things over with 
me. It makes it easier for him to have me under- 
stand. I can help him with the planters who 
come up from the South to look into his methods. 
Sometimes the mill keeps dad here in town, but 
he is just crazy about the fields. I guess it is be- 
cause he has always worked in the mill, but this 
tobacco business is new. It is only about ten 
years since he got stuck on a deal and had to take 
a lot of waste land in payment. But you can’t 

15 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Stick dad. No, sir, not for long! Dad started 
tobacco on that land, and now it is just about as 
profitable as city lots.’’ 

While Dot had been culling information about 
her new acquaintance she had not been secretive 
about her own history. She told him her age, 
eighteen and a half, that her name was really 
Dorothy, and that she was an only child; that she 
belonged to the dearest dad in the world and the 
sweetest mother, and that all her nineteen years 
had been spent in the little town of Edgecombe, 
which lay outstretched before them in the valley. 
There he could see all the complicated build- 
ings of her father’s mill and the rows and rows of 
neat little cottages in which the operatives lived. 
There, well to the right, was the high-school which 
she had attended. Right in front of them was the 
church. Beyond that again was the big public 
school — ‘‘ It wasn’t so big when I went there, but 
dad donated a wing the day I graduated. I was 
valedictorian,” she told him, with a pride which 
made his achievement of First at Oxford seem 
insignificant. 

“Were you, indeed ?” he cried. 

“I was,” she answered solemnly, “and when I 
read my paper mother cried and dad was so tickled 
he could hardly see.” 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“What tickled him asked Gresham, with 
some natural amazement. 

“Oh, nothing. He was just tickled, that was 
all. Glad, you know,” she explained as he still 
looked puzzled. “He is just the dearest dad, and 
oh!” she broke ofF as a dust-covered buggy turned 
in at the gate, “here he comes now. My! won’t 
he be glad to see you.” 


17 


CHAPTER III 


D orothy ran along the porch and out upon 
the landing stage in the middle of the porte- 
cochere. She waved vehemently to the occupant 
of the approaching vehicle, and he waved as vehe- 
mently at her. He was not yet near enough to 
allow of Gresham seeing him clearly, but Dorothy 
required no closer identification. 

‘‘You are going to meet the dearest old dad in 
the world,” said she. “Do you feel worthy ?” 

“I don’t,” said Gresham, “but I’ll dissemble.” 
A little negro boy who crouched in the corner of 
the seat beside Mr. Forbes drove the horse round 
out of sight behind the house, while Forbes looked 
out from his daughter’s embrace at the mustard- 
coloured stranger behind her. Gresham looked 
at him with no less interest and found him to be a 
shrewd and genial American of middle life and 
middle class. His costume consisted of frock- 
coat, gray trousers, white waistcoat and wide- 
brimmed straw hat. He greeted Gresham warmly 
when Dot had performed the introduction, and in- 
sisted that he should stay to lunch, a repast which 

i8 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

was even then, as Gresham could hear, making 
its appearance in the dining-room. He took 
Gresham’s acceptance for granted and broke in 
upon his demurs with, “What will you drink, or 
has Dot attended to that?” 

“Dad, dear,” said Dot penitently, “I didn’t. 
Honestly, I forgot all about it.” 

“Well, you’re a nice hostess,” chided her father, 
“a boiling hot, dusty day, and not to offer a man 
a drink. I am surprised at you; but never mind, 
we’ll have time for one before lunch. Go and get 
the things. Dot.” 

Dot reappeared almost immediately with the 
ingredients of what Mr. Forbes described as a 
Scotch high-ball. And presently Mrs. Forbes 
came out to join them and to apologise for her 
tardy appearance. 

“Now, mother, tell the truth,” Forbes said to 
her, “what were you doing ?” 

“Oh, John,” she pleaded, “how can you?” 

“Why can’t I ?” Forbes laughed as he put his 
arm around her. “This is Captain Gresham, a 
friend of Elliott’s. Do you remember Elliott, he 
stayed with us last year. Well! this is his friend, 
and, for all you know, Elliott may have told him 
about your little ways.” 

“Oh, John,” she remonstrated again and 
blushed warmly. She was not so tall as her 

19 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

daughter and not, Gresham decided, as pretty, 
but she had the same soft dark hair, the same 
brown eyes without Dot’s shrewd frankness, and 
the same rounded chin without Dot’s determina- 
tion. She was most beautifully and perfectly 
dressed, and it was only in relation to her perfec- 
tion that Gresham noticed and appraised the 
costly simplicity of Dot’s gown. 

“Well, mother, go on, we’re waiting,” said 
Forbes. “’Fess up, what were you doing?” 

“I was only up in the linen-room, dear,” Mrs. 
Forbes explained. “Captain Gresham will under- 
stand that there is a great deal to be done in keep- 
ing a big house like this running smoothly, and 
he won’t think it’s a bit kind of you to tease me 
about it.” 

“Well, I won’t,” said her husband, “but Cap- 
tain Gresham ought to know, if he is going to 
stay to lunch, that you are the most inveterate 
housekeeper in the United States.” 

“My dear sir,” he went on, addressing his guest, 
“her heart is so bound up in this house that she 
occasionally farms out her husband and daughter on 
her neighbours so that she can have it all to herself.” 

“Spring cleaning,” explained Mrs. Forbes to 
Gresham. “They take it very badly.” 

“And it’s over now,” cried Dot. “We’re quite, 
quite safe for another year.” 


20 


CHAPTER IV 


G resham thought as he took his place at 
the beautifully appointed table in the 
handsome shutter-shaded dining-room that Mrs. 
Forbes’s housekeeping preoccupation seemed a 
most satisfactory one. It was difficult, sur- 
rounded by all the familiar paraphernalia of meal- 
time at home, to realise that he was in an alien 
land, and that these people with whom he found 
himself so quickly on terms of ease and intimacy 
had been blank strangers to him three hours before. 

The manner of ease and frankness which had so 
attracted and surprised him in the daughter was 
evidently the manner of the household. Even the 
maid who served the meal shared it, and urged 
dishes upon them as one having knowledge of 
their true constituents. 

‘‘You had better have some cream potatoes, 
Mr. Forbes; Mary cooked them special for you; 
they are the first new ones this year.” 

“Oh, very well,” said Forbes; “that was very 
good of Mary.” 

As the meal progressed Gresham was more and 


21 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

more amazed at the scope and number of the topics 
discussed by these three. One of them, Dot, had 
never crossed the mountain which enclosed the 
valley; Mrs. Forbes had been once or twice to 
New York and often to Hartford; and Forbes 
himself had travelled no farther than the ordinary 
prosecution of his business demanded. Yet here 
they sat discussing affairs of international interest, 
and Forbes’s knowledge and memory of the South- 
African campaigns astounded his visitor. Usually 
the most reticent of heroes, Gresham, encouraged 
by their intelligent interest, found himself describ- 
ing his part in various engagements, and discussing 
British tactics and commanders as technically, but 
not perhaps as frankly, as though his audience 
were composed of fellow-officers. They were still, 
conversationally, in Africa, when the meal ended 
and they drifted back to the veranda. 

Presently Forbes’s buggy reappeared, and Gresh- 
am rose to make his adieus and apologies for the 
unconscionable time he had stayed. A whole code 
of signals were exchanged between Mr. and Mrs. 
Forbes, and then the latter asked him, with a 
pretty insistence, to make his home with them for 
as long as he stayed at Edgecombe. 

‘‘Oh, I couldn’t think of it, really,” he remon- 
strated. “It is awfully good of you to take me 


22 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

in like this, but I am quite comfortable at the 
hotel/’ 

Dot turned to him suddenly. “Where do you 
expect to go to when you die,” she demanded, “if 
you tell whoppers like that.^ No one was ever 
comfortable at the Edgecombe Hotel. And it is 
only because people leave it so quickly that it 
has not earned the highest death-rate of the State. 
You comfortable there,” she laughed. “I can 
just see you fishing the flies out of the soup.” 

“Dorothy,” her mother remonstrated. 

“Well, I can,” said Dot. “I can imagine it. I 
have seen so many people do it. Really, Captain 
Gresham, you would be more comfortable here; 
people generally do drift here when they have had 
a meal or two at the hotel.” 

“Well, we will call it fixed,” Forbes broke out. 
“You stay here with the ladies this afternoon; it 
is too hot and too late to go out to the fields, and 
ril send up for your duds as I pass the hotel. 
Elliott told me to take care of you, and I propose 
to do it. There is nothing mother enjoys so much 
as some one to take care of, and Dot and I are in 
such good shape that she can’t exercise her talents 
on us. Are your things in your trunk or are they 
scattered around the room so that you would have 
to go down and pack them yourself?” 

23 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“You’re awfully kind,” said Gresham again, 
and really he was rather overwhelmed by this 
hospitality. “My things are scattered about a 
bit, but my man is there and he’ll pack them for 
me. Shall he be in your way here ? he can quite 
as well stay down there, you know.” 

But here Mrs. Forbes’s eagerness grew, if pos- 
sible, more keen. Entertaining was her hobby; 
one wing of the house was devoted to guest- 
rooms, and in it a suite had been set apart on the 
architect’s plans for “guest with own maid or 
valet.” Thus far it had not been used in its 
designated capacity; the Forbes’s friends had not 
contracted the maid or valet habit. 

Mother with daughter, father with son, had 
often occupied the suite, but never before in the 
history of Edgecombe had a valet invaded the 
town. Mrs. Forbes determined to secure the 
valet and to put him in his allotted place. She 
felt all the triumph of the puzzle-player who, after 
long effort, finds a missing piece and slips it into 
its waiting place. 


24 


CHAPTER V 


P ASSING through the village Forbes stopped 
at the untidy white-porticoed hotel with its 
long line of rickety chairs and cuspidors. The 
habitual number of loungers were gathered there 
discussing politics and the weather, and they 
greeted Forbes with as much respect as their demo- 
cratic spirit allowed them to show. But he had no 
leisure nor inclination to listen to their surmises 
on thunder-storms or elections, and he went 
quickly through the screen door which led to the 
bar. There he found the proprietor whiling away 
the empty hours with yesterday’s paper and a 
thick cigar. 

“Thought you’d be down,” was his greeting. 
“Thought so just as soon as he began asking where 
you lived and said he had letters of introduction to 
you. Queer fellow, ain’t he?” 

“Oh, I guess he’s all right,” Forbes answered. 
“Sure he’s all right,” Jimmy Kenny replied. 
“But he’ll go high, John, higher than most you’ve 
had from me.” 

“What room did he have?” 

25 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“He had three on the next floor. There was 
one for him, there was one he was going to have 
for a setting-room; we had to take the bed down — 
I don’t know why he couldn’t set in a room with 
a bed in it — and there was one for his hired man. 
Be you going to take the hired man, too?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then there was the board for the two of them 
and the bar charges.” 

“Heavy drinker?” queried Forbes. 

“No, not him; just whiskey and soda. But 
say, gee whiz, you ought to see that hired man.” 

“Well, I want to see him,” said Forbes. “I 
want to tell him about bringing the duds up to the 
house.” 

“You’ll find him round on the side porch,” said 
Jimmy. “But say, I might as well tell ye he lo- 
cated the ingredients of mint-julep this morning, 
and he found the necessities of a gin ricky pretty 
nigh about the same time. He has been enjoying 
himself considerable since he made them two dis- 
coveries. Now, if you want to make it right about 
his bar charges ” 

“No, Jimmy, I guess not,” Forbes answered. 
“I guess he can keep on coming here for his 
juleps and rickies. I’ll just make it right with 
you about the rooms and the board.” And before 
26 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

he sought out the faithful James upon the side 
porch, Forbes drew up a cheque of considerable 
magnitude to pay for one week’s pleasure for his 
wife. It was his custom so to deflect visitors of 
any importance or promise of entertainment whose 
interests brought them into the orbit of Mr. Kenny. 
It was also his habit and intention to pay for 
what he got and to stand under obligation to no 
man. 

The arrangement worked admirably. Mrs. 
Forbes gained her heart’s desire; Mr. Kenny lost 
nothing but the trouble of entertaining the travel- 
ling public. The arrangement was of course a 
secret between the two men, but Forbes felt no 
compunction as to the kindly deceit it involved. 
Mother wanted company; well, he proposed to get 
it for her. It was well worth the price to see her 
so happy and so busy. Other men had untidy, 
uncomfortable homes and wives. The House was 
always a pleasure, always a credit, and his women- 
kind were always suitably and carefully dressed. 

Forbes did not disguise from himself the fact 
that he, too, enjoyed entertaining the strangers 
who so often developed into friends. A great deal 
of the universality of information which had so 
impressed Gresham was due to the number and 
variety of the guests shanghaied from Mr. Kenny. 

27 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

There had been ministers of various denomina- 
tions, lecturers on various topics, business men rep- 
resenting all the branches involved in manufacture 
and agriculture, and lately, since he had become^ to 
his own amazement, a tobacco planter, there had 
been gentle-voiced, courteous Southerners, gra- 
cious of manner and quick of temper when they 
were old, casual of manner and strangely lacking 
in energy when young. Not only Mrs. Forbes 
benefited by this constant hospitality, it had been 
a liberal education for Dot; it was the source of 
the calm, frank graciousness which so attracted 
Gresham. 


28 


CHAPTER VI 


T he next few days were full of novelty and 
excitement for Lord Gresham. He quickly 
won Mrs. Forbes’s heart by his very real admira- 
tion for The House and his keen and sensible 
interest in all its arrangements. 

“I have a house of my own,” he informed her, 
‘‘a great ramshackle affair with the wind blowing 
through it, but when I go back I am going to make 
the housekeeper try a whole lot of the dodges I 
have seen here for making things easy and com- 
fortable. Although,” he admitted, “it is not easy 
for me to teach her anything. You see, she was 
with my people for years, and was at the head of 
things when I was born, and she still seems to 
think I am a little chap and ought to be eating 
bread and jam in the nursery.” 

He was quite earnest in his admiration of The 
House, though its architecture puzzled him a little, 
until Mrs. Forbes told him the history of its 
development. 

“We didn’t contemplate building so large a 
house at all,” said she. They had returned to the 
29 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

porch after their inspection, and Gresham was 
smoking in a large chair as comfortably as though 
Edgecombe and The House were his natural 
habitat. Dot and her father were off on some 
business expedition. He took her with him when- 
ever possible, and the stranger was alone with his 
hostess. He was glad of an opportunity to talk 
to her. Somehow in the society of her more in- 
sistent daughter he felt that he had not appreci- 
ated the quiet sense and strength of the mother; 
and he had accepted with alacrity her rather timid 
proposition that, as they had an hour or two un- 
provided for, he should allow her to show him 
The House. They had been all over it from 
cellar to attic, and he had found, as he told her, 
all its appointments characterised by good taste 
and good sense. Her pride in it was as man- 
ifest as it had cause to be. It was her play- 
thing, her hobby, her reward for long years of 
waiting. 

“You see,’* she returned to her story, “when I 
was quite young, Mr. Forbes was not so well off 
as lots of other young men in the town. His 
father owned the mill, but it wasn’t half the mill 
then that he has made it since. He just worked 
as clerk. You don’t mind,” she suddenly broke 
off, “my telling you about it?” 

30 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

*‘My dear madam,’’ he answered in all sin- 
cerity, “I am charmed.” 

‘‘Well,” she went on, “there was another young 
man in the town whom I thought a good deal of — 
seems funny for me to be talking to you like this 
— and he was quite wealthy. He had a house 
down there where you can see the depot now; it 
was a right pretty house and he said he’d get it all 
furnished and papered new if I’d let him. He 
was an orphan, you see, and we’d have had the 
house all to ourselves, and Mr. Forbes didn’t have 
any house at that time, and if I married him we 
would have to take rooms somewhere, or else live 
with his people or with mine until he could get a 
little better fixed. I had kept house for my father 
ever since I was twelve years old. Mother died 
then, and whenever I thought about getting mar- 
ried it meant having things of my very own around 
me. I always did love china and pretty furniture, 
and father didn’t care much what he had. ‘The 
old things were good enough,’ he said, ‘they 
would last as long as he did, anyhow’; so you can 
see it meant quite a good deal to me, that other 
house and new furniture and paper and paint and 
all. And everything just as I wanted it. Mr. 
Forbes knew how I felt, and one night he said 
that if I’d marry him and wait a little while he’d 

31 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

build me the loveliest house that Edgecombe had 
ever seen and fill it full of the loveliest things. 
If rd wait. And I waited. And now you have 
seen The House/’ she ended, with a little shake in 
her voice, ‘‘and I guess you will have thought he 
kept his word.” 

“Rather,” cried Gresham warmly. “I should 
say he had. Who designed it?” 

“We both did,” she answered proudly. “We 
had an architect just at first, and he drew up the 
plans for quite a medium-sized house. It was all 
we could afford then and all I wanted. But we 
got so interested in the plans in magazines and 
papers, and in all the descriptions of houses in the 
books we read, that The House kept on growing 
and growing. We had several good tobacco years 
just about that time and we felt we could afford 
more. So, after a while, the architect got tired of 
putting in new rooms as we ordered them and said 
we were spoiling the design. Mr. Forbes said he 
didn’t care a hang for the design, what he wanted 
he proposed to have; but when we decided to 
leave it hollow in the middle and have a court-yard 
like we read about in Paris houses, the architect 
said he wouldn’t have any more to do with it. He 
was real excited. And who do you suppose fin- 
ished it?” 


32 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“I can’t imagine,” said Gresham, with flatter- 
ing interest. 

“Father did,” said Mrs. Forbes. “He can do 
anything he wants to do, and just talking things 
over with that architect had taught him more 
architecture than the man knew himself. Father 
put in that court-yard which the architect said 
couldn’t be done, and then he put in that drying- 
room I showed you up-stairs, and planned for the 
sun-parlour outside our room. Every one says 
they never saw a house like it. There was quite a 
lot about it in the papers when we first moved in.” 

“I should think there might be,” Gresham 
cried. “I have travelled about a good deal and 
I never saw anything so complete and comfort- 
able.” 

“Only one thing we haven’t got, and that is 
my fault,” she admitted; “the only kind of room 
I wouldn’t have was an operating-room. Mr. 
Forbes went to see one of his men in the hospi- 
tal in the next town when he was sick there, and 
they showed him all over the building. He came 
back and wanted I should have an operating-room 
in The House. But I couldn’t,” she shuddered, 
“bring myself to have any.” 

“But you’ve got that little sick-room. I never 
saw such a jolly little place to be ill in; I believe 
33 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

you can see one hundred miles from its window, 
and the cosy little place next door for the nurse/’ 
“Oh, I wouldn’t be without that for anything,” 
she answered. “You haven’t any idea of the 
number of people, for all it looks so white, that we 
have had there. It always hurts me a little to 
think that Dorothy couldn’t have had the measles 
and whooping-cough and chicken-pox there in- 
stead of in the old house. But there,” she ended, 
“I have talked enough about myself. Now tell 
me something about yourself.” 

Gresham was still obediently loquacious when 
Dot and her father returned. 


34 


CHAPTER VII 


A braham petty intended to marry Doro- 
L thy Forbes. Such had been his inten- 
tion in the September days when she, a shy uncer- 
tain little figure in a scarlet dress with a scarlet 
bow over one of her tear-filled eyes, hovered in 
the doorway of the Edgecombe schoolhouse and 
sucked a small pink thumb. She was six years 
old then; he eight; and while this difference be- 
tween them remained constant, and his determi- 
nation knew no change, yet other circumstances 
arose, as time went on, which might have seemed 
disparities to eyes less worldly or more humble 
than Abraham’s. For Mr. Petty, senior, had long 
ago passed out of this troubled world leaving 
Abraham, Samantha — two years older than her 
brother — and the mother of these two to get on 
as best they might without his wisdom and ad- 
vice. As he had never contributed anything else 
to the maintenance of the household, and as his 
wisdom had always been Delphic and his advice 
generally Quixotic, they managed much as they 
had done before. Mrs. Petty was still dress-ma- 
ker in ordinary to the elite of Edgecombe. Abra- 
35 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

ham pursued his studies — and Dorothy Forbes 
— through all the various grades of education 
until they reached, with ribbon-bound diplomas 
and much parental enthusiasm, the pinnacle of 
learning, graduation from the high school. 
Samantha, the only one on earth who really 
mourned for the futile and harmless Mr. Petty, 
was set apart as musical by her remaining parent, 
and forced to spend long hours at the piano. 
The uncomfortable periods of before breakfast 
and after supper were set aside for this torture, 
so that Mrs. Petty’s customers might not be in- 
volved in it. Samantha wept, revolted, both in 
vain. Her grandfather, maternal, had left a 
small bequest to be used intact for the benefit of 
one of the children: either to make a musician of 
Samantha, who was supposed to have inherited 
the musical ability which he manifested by dole- 
ful solos upon the flute, or, Samantha’s genius 
failing, it was to be used to establish Abraham in 
any business he should choose. 

The old flute player’s spirit was strong in his 
daughter. Mrs. Petty loved music as she loved 
nothing else. Her love was entirely inarticulate, 
but it was none the weaker for that. It was also 
a starved love: too epicurean to accept the pale 
flutings of her father or the uninspired correctness 
36 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

of her daughter. Year by year she had laid aside 
some of her scant earnings, and year by year her 
star shone clearer over the horizon of the future. 
Samantha should have her grandfather’s money; 
should go to a vague ‘^abroad,” there to ‘‘take” 
music in quantities as large as she could absorb, 
and Mrs. Petty should go with her, idle at last, and 
fare from concert to recital, from recital to opera, 
in a haze of joy whose only distinct feature — at 
that distance — seemed to be her own tired hands 
encased in white kid gloves resting idly in her lap. 

That summer whose beginning was marked by 
the coming of the drought and of Captain Gresh- 
am was the time set down in the will for action. 
Samantha was then twenty-three, and if talent 
lay within her it must have found its voice. She 
was to play for three musicians of recognized re- 
pute in New York, and upon their judgment her 
future was to rest. 

Samantha dreaded these trials and dreaded, too, 
the verdicts, for she shared in none of her moth- 
er’s ambitions. She was really tired of music and 
wanted to marry an impecunious and attractive 
young farmer who lived a little way out of the town. 
Her dread of succeeding and of being forced to 
leave him was only equalled by her dread of 
failing and of meeting her mother’s disappoint- 
37 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

ment and reproach. Altogether she was in rather 
a turmoil mentally and emotionally. Abraham 
knew of the farmer, knew of Samantha’s lack of 
ambition, and straightway set himself to plan a 
partnership with Joshua Vinney, keeper of the 
town store. Ever since his graduation from the 
high school Abraham had been Joshua’s assistant. 
It was his pleasure and his pride, partly for con- 
venience and partly to show the vivid hue of his 
shirt sleeves — he always bought the most brilliant 
and startling designs — to serve horse-shoe nails, 
buck saws and other articles to the public at 
Edgecombe. While the honest lady shut up in a 
glass case made change and entered the purchases 
in her book, he would engage the customers in 
gossip and conversation. Mr. Vinney was himself 
a person of deep knowledge on every subject un- 
der the sun, and with a passion for sharing these 
gifts with his neighbour. The young lady in the 
glass case was, also, gifted with a lively mind and 
tongue, and one side of her crystal prison was gen- 
erally open so that she could exercise her conver- 
sational talents. It was, therefore, natural that 
Abraham should have enjoyed himself more at the 
store than in any other sphere, and have decided 
that, if his grandfather’s legacy should become 
his, he would buy a partnership with Mr. Vinney, 
38 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

marry Dot immediately and live happy ever 
after. 

The young person in the glass case had been at 
school with Dot and Abraham; had known these 
plans of Abraham’s for years and sympathised 
thoroughly with them. Legacy or no legacy, she 
thought Dot a most fortunate young woman, and 
Abraham in his glowing ‘ shirt sleeves, with his 
black hair plastered in a magnificent “cow’s lick” 
upon his thoughtful brow, a most desirable young 
man. 

News spread rapidly in Edgecombe, and Cap- 
tain Gresham had been domiciled at the Forbes’s 
for only one night before all the town knew of it. 
He would have been surprised had any one told 
him that his interest for the townspeople consisted 
chiefly in his having a “hired man” and in con- 
jectures as to what this attache did for him. One 
section of the community was of the opinion that 
Gresham was a lunatic, James his keeper, and 
that Forbes had done a mighty risky thing in ad- 
mitting them to The House. 

“My sakes,” said the young lady in Mr. Vin- 
ney’s glass case. “I should think Dot Forbes 
would be scared to death having a crazy man 
around, wouldn’t you, Mr. Vinney ?” 

“Well,” said Mr. Vinney judiciously — he was a 
39 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

little old man, very bright of eye and large of 
nose, and his resemblance to the parrot whose 
cage hung among the sickles, brush-hooks, rakes 
and coal-scuttles was very marked — “I don’t 
know as I can give an opinion on that. Dot 
Forbes ain’t afraid of much.” 

“He didn’t look crazy,” Abraham submitted. 
“Mother says that he’s got the hired man to take 
care of his clothes and dress him. She says she 
has read about it in books how Englishmen have 
some one to dress them.” 

“Do tell!” cried Rose Matilda Perkins from her 
conservatory; “he looks big enough to dress him- 
self.” 

“But, anyway,” Abraham submitted, “I’ll be 
able to tell you more about him to-morrow. Me 
and mother and Samantha are going up to The 
House. Mrs. Forbes invited us one day last 
week.” 

“My,” exclaimed Rose Matilda, “some people 
do have luck.” 


40 


/ 


CHAPTER VIII 

A braham found it difficult to formulate his 
L opinions of the stranger. He had never seen 
any one quite like him, and at first he promptly 
set him down, as Reuben Sands had done, for a 
dude; and Gresham’s faultless evening dress gave 
him some excuse for this verdict. Abraham had 
not often seen clothes from London’s Bond Street, 
and he completely disapproved of them. The 
white waistcoat he considered absolutely improper, 
and the silk stockings and patent-leather pumps 
he found sissy in the extreme. He derived great 
satisfaction from the superior elegance of his own 
attire and trusted to Dot’s good sense to prefer 
white-duck trousers, a cutaway coat, a blue shirt 
sprinkled with red horse-shoes, a large four-in-hand 
white tie transfixed with a bull-dog’s head in gold, 
and pointed tan shoes. He was somewhat con- 
verted by the flavour of the cigar which Gresham 
offered him, and by the tan which coloured the 
stranger’s hands and face, and made his blue eyes 
so surprising and incongruous; and, as the evening 
went on, he found himself more and more inter- 


41 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

ested in the new-comer, and almost sufficiently so 
to ask what that unexplained hired man was 
for. 

Gresham was as interested in Abraham as 
Abraham was in him; and the youth’s absolute 
self-satisfaction, not blatant, not impertinent, but 
confidently founded upon a sincere belief in him- 
self, quite entertained his new acquaintance. The 
hot spell had broken at last, and the evening was 
cool enough to make the drawing-room habitable, 
and Mrs. Forbes presently asked Samantha if she 
would play for them. Playing was not much of 
a novelty for the poor girl. For the last two or 
three years she had added to the household ex- 
chequer by playing at all the dances within a five- 
mile radius; but she was obedient, amiable and 
as self-possessed as her brother. Also, notwith- 
standing the impecunious farmer’s views to the 
contrary, she took a healthy interest in the hand- 
some visitor, and was a little piqued by his absorp- 
tion in Dot Forbes, who, though perhaps better 
dressed, had no accomplishments. Therefore she 
smiled, approached the piano with confident alac- 
rity and almost pulled its heart out with a series 
of deafening chords. From these she proceeded 
to more gentle strains; her time, her touch, her 
technique were all unquestionably correct and all 


42 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

as amazing as was her lack of any feeling or any 
talent. 

Again Gresham marvelled. This was as far as 
possible removed from the inane drawing-room 
performances to which he was accustomed — the 
girl had everything which conscientious work 
could give her. He moved to a chair from which 
he could see her face and watched her. Her atten- 
tion was miles away, perhaps dallying with the 
young farmer, and her performance was absolutely 
mechanical. She crashed to the end, then rose 
and went back to a seat beside her mother amid a 
buzz of general applause. When Gresham came 
up to thank her, she listened to him silently, in- 
differently; but Mrs. Petty detained him, invited 
him by a gesture of a hand not yet encased in 
white kid to take an empty seat on the sofa be- 
side her. 

‘H have been thinking,’’ she began, ‘‘that Sa- 
mantha has learnt about all she can from her 
teacher down at Hartford.” 

“Who is her teacher ?” asked Gresham. “She 
is amazingly well taught.” 

“Well, for the last year,” said Mrs. Petty, “she 
has been taking lessons off a German gentleman 
in Hartford — his name is Grote; but he’s a real 
pleasant gentleman — came up here once and spent 
43 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

a Sunday with us. You remember him, don’t you, 
Mrs. Forbes?” 

“I do, indeed,” Mrs. Forbes answered. “I 
shall never forget him, nor how wonderfully he 
played on the organ. That’s one of the reasons I 
like to have ministers stay here; sometimes some 
of them can play the organ, and I’d rather listen 
to that than almost anything else. You see. Cap- 
tain Gresham,” she went on, “it did seem rather 
foolish to have a whole music-room just for a 
piano, so we had an organ built in. Some people 
say it’s a very good one.” 

“It’s a beautiful one,” said Mrs. Petty. “Well, 
and so Mr. Grote says he can’t go much further 
with Samantha, and I’m planning to take her 
abroad next year;” and she went on to tell him 
of the terms of her father’s will. 

“Of course,” said Gresham, when she appealed 
to him, “I cannot undertake to give an opinion. 
But if you should ever be in Leipsic, get her 
to take a few lessons from an old chap there, 
called Professor Emil Berger, at the Conserv- 
atory. He taught me,” said Gresham, falling 
back upon his favourite phrase, “no end of 
dodges.” 

“Then you play!” cried Mrs. Forbes in amaze- 
ment. “You never told us.” 


44 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“You never asked me,” parried Gresham. 
“But to prove that I can be frank, I will under- 
take to play your organ for you if you’d care to 
have me.” 

Well, he played. First the piano, then the 
organ, and he played with such ease and grace and 
feeling as drew the difficult tears to Mrs. Petty’s 
eyes, almost reconciled Samantha to music as a 
profession, and induced Abraham, in a fit of geni- 
ality, to invite Gresham to come down to the store 
and look over some new hardware catalogues 
lately arrived from Chicago. 

The Forbeses were naturally delighted at the 
success of the evening and the prowess of their 
guest, and even Reuben Sands, standing out in 
the soft darkness with the other servants, forgave 
the mustard-coloured garments and forgot the 
eye-glass. 

Mrs. Petty enjoyed herself so thoroughly, and 
abandoned herself so absolutely to the pleasures of 
the moment, that it was not until she had retired 
to her black-walnut bedstead, and was dropping 
off to sleep, that a terrible realisation came to her. 
That — that was talent; musical talent. There 
was love and ease and understanding in that 
young man’s playing. There were none of these 
things in Samantha’s. 


45 


CHAPTER IX 


I T had never been Mrs. Petty’s habit to put off 
the evil day or moment. Life’s crises were 
as so many dresses to her. She cut into them and 
finished them as soon as possible. So, within a 
day or two, she took Samantha to New York and 
heard the verdict she had dreaded and which the 
girl received with veiled relief; and Abraham, as 
soon as his rise in fortune was revealed to him, 
went straightway to The House and asked Dot 
Forbes to marry him. He was eloquent upon 
what he would do for her, upon how happy he 
would make her, upon how much he loved her; 
but, not being wise in the ways of women, he 
omitted to tell her how much he needed her and 
how much she could do for him. 

‘‘You see,” he ended, after urging his own more 
personal view-point — “you see, it ain’t as if you’d 
have to go away from your folks. We’d go right 
on here living at Edgecombe, and you’d see your 
pa and ma every day. Maybe you’re thinking 
somewhat of marrying a foreigner. I ain’t goin’ 
no nearer than that. Well, don’t you do it. 
You read in the papers what happened to all them 
46 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

tony girls what went and got spliced with dukes 
and earls and such. No, siree, what you want to 
do is to marry somebody you know all about, 
somebody that went to school with you. I am 
awful glad mother decided just when she did. It 
was worrying me some to have this English feller 
always round ye and me not ready to say a word, 
but I guess it ’ll be different now. He’s a nice 
feller, I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ against him; but he 
ain’t like I am to ye. He ain’t loved ye ever since 
you was a little tad, and he ain’t built his whole 
life on ye, like I have.” 

“ But, dear Abraham,” cried Dot distressedly. 

“Now, don’t you say anything in a heated 
moment as you’d be sorry for afterward,” he 
warned her. “I don’t want no answer from you 
to-day. You just take a week to think it over, 
and by that time you will think like I do. Your 
pa knows how I feel, he’s knowed right along, I 
guess, and I don’t believe he’d make me any 
trouble. There ain’t a feller in Edgecombe doing 
better than I am, or attending more strictly to 
business. And I love you. Dot. I’ve told you 
how I love ye, and I want ye to take that week to 
think it over. Don’t let Gresham distract you. 
You keep right on thinkin’ of all the things I’ve 
told ye.” 


47 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“But, Abraham — ” Dot began again. 

And again he stopped her — would not listen to 
her then, and went away in great heat and hurry. 
Upon his way back to Joshua Vinney’s store he 
encountered the leisurely Gresham and accosted 
him with: 

“Say, Cap’n, I want to tell ye somethin’ be- 
tween man and man. You know Dot Forbes.?” 
Gresham nodded. “Well, her and me is think- 
ing of getting married.” 

“Indeed,” said Gresham, overcoming some sur- 
prise, and then courteously, “Pray accept my con- 
gratulations. She is very charming, and I am sure 
you will be very happy.” 

“Oh, well,” Abraham admitted, “I guess it 
ain’t got to the congratulation period yet. We 
are just thinking about it. I’ve been thinking 
about it ’most as long as I’ve been alive, but she 
only started on it this afternoon. I have just 
been up and proposed,” he explained, “and she 
agreed to think it over for a week. Thought I’d 
better tell ye, so that if she seems sort of quiet 
sometimes, you’ll know it ain’t anything personal 
to you. She’ll just be thinking of me, that’s all. 
Of course a young lady has to think quite a lot 
about a proposal from a young gentleman like me. 
Don’t get ’em often. There ain’t — as I’ve tried 
48 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

to make her understand — there ain’t a young man 
in Edgecombe more respected than what I am, so 
that if she seems kind of thoughtful, you just let 
her be, will ye ?” 

“I will,” promised Gresham. 

“And say, Cap’n,” pursued the eager lover, “if 
you was talking with her and didn’t know what 
else to talk about, you might tell her what you 
think of me. She’d be interested.” 

“Are you sure that my opinion of you would be 
of assistance ?” 

“Sure! You know what girls are. They 
hardly listen to what their folks and their friends 
tell ’em, and along comes some yap they know 
nothing about, and they take him for gospel. 
Present company,” added Abraham, generally 
and vaguely, “always excepted.” 

“You are very kind.” 

“Don’t mention it. You’re welcome,” an- 
swered the lover pleasantly. He had a convction 
that every social amenity could be answered by 
one of these phrases, and when he was in doubt 
he used both and allowed his interlocutor to 
choose between them. 

“I did think some,” he now proceeded, “of 
havin’ you go away for a spell, but I’ve about de- 
cided that ain’t necessary.” 

49 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

‘‘I’m glad you reached that decision,” said 
Gresham, with a suspicious quietness. 

“No, it ain’t necessary,” Abraham assured 
him. “We can fix it without that. I guess you 
won’t bother Dot none. How d’ you like the old 
lady.?” 

“I find Mrs. Forbes charming,” answered 
Gresham. 

“An’ John Forbes is all right, too. He’s a 
mighty smart man. Real entertaining when he 
wants to be. You can go round with the old folks 
for a few days. An’ say, when you ain’t got one 
of them to talk to, you can come down to the store. 
You’d like Mr. Vinney, and the parrot is real 
lively. Miss Perkins would admire to know you,” 
he added as a final inducement. “She’s real 
lively, too. An’ maybe some of the neighbours 
would drop in. We’d make it pleasant for you. 
Of course you know how we feel about Britishers, 
but seeing as you’re my friend you’d get along all 
right.” 

A spasm of what Abraham accepted as hum- 
ble appreciation of Edgecombe’s nobility crossed 
Gresham’s face. 

“I’ll come and talk to the parrot,” he decided 
as one feeling himself unfit for higher things. 

“All right,” Abraham answered. “I’m real 

50 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

glad to have you up to The House/’ he assured 
the alien. “You do just as I say. You leave Dot 
be, except when you’re talking to her about me. 
But don’t say nothing to the old folks. I’ll tend 
to them myself.” 

“It might be better,” Gresham acquiesced. 

‘‘John Forbes will be tickled,” Abraham mused 
aloud. “I guess he must worry some about 
what ’ll happen to his business and the women 
folk when he’s gone. An’ he’s nearly forty-eight. 
He’d better worry. But if he knows I’m on the 
job, tending to things, he’ll go easier.” 

“Quite so. But about this business of your 
own, now.? Would you be giving that up ?” 

“Give up nothing! Say, what do you think I 
am. I can run all the businesses I want to. Us 
trained business men is like that. It takes John 
Forbes all his time to run one woollen mill and a 
few fields of tobacco. That’s because John 
Forbes ain’t trained. He’d ought to have went 
through high school and into hardware like I 
done. A man what’s in hardware comes in con- 
tact with all the businesses there is. Ever think 
of that?” 

Gresham hadn’t. 

“Well, just think of it now,” Abraham ad- 
vised. “I’d like to stay and hear you talk some 

51 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

more, but I can’t leave the store alone. So 
long.” 

“And a great deal longer,” Gresham deter- 
mined, as he pulled his cap down over his eyes 
and set out in the direction of a cool-looking grove, 
to whose exploration he was proceeding when the 
confidential Abraham waylaid him. 


52 


CHAPTER X 


T he cool beauty of that wooded space was 
largely lost upon Gresham. Abraham’s as- 
surance must, he told himself, be founded upon 
some encouragement. Inexplicable though it 
seemed to him, the girl must have given the fellow 
some reason to hope. And then he found com- 
fort, for somehow the thought of Dot’s marrying 
the boor distressed him, in the remembrance of 
Petty’s speech about Forbes. Surely he had no 
encouragement for considering himself an accept- 
able son-in-law in the eyes of that gentleman. 
Not even the top of his smooth and empty head 
had ever appeared over the horizon of Forbes’s 
attention. The evening of the Pettys’ visit had 
already shown Gresham so much and Forbes had 
only that day expressed very different hopes and 
plans for his daughter’s future. 

They had been discussing the proper time for 
‘‘topping” tobacco. “It’s a question of feeling, 
of color,” said Forbes. “It can’t be taught, and 
I’ve never learned it. A man who knows can tell 
just by looking off over the field and sniffing the 
53 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

air. A man who doesn’t know couldn’t tell with 
a microscope. As I say, I never could get it. I 
just leave it to my daughter. She can tell every 
time. She learned the trick from an old darky 
we used to have. He is dead now, but when Dot 
was little there was no holiday for her like a day 
with Uncle Noah. Poor little girl,” he went on 
somewhat remorsefully, don’t believe she’s 
had very much of a bringing up. Mother and I 
never did hold much with the system of sending 
young girls away off by themselves to learn all 
the wickedness of a big city in those fashionable 
boarding schools. She was all we had, and we 
didn’t feel like having her educated away from us. 
So we kept her right here and sent her to school 
with the rest of the town children, and her mother 
tended to the fashionable part. She’s a Palmer, 
you know. Mis’ Forbes is,” he explained, as who 
should say, “The blood of all the Howards flows 
in those veins!” 

Gresham was properly impressed. 

“Yes, she’s a Palmer. She’s a Colonial Dame 
and a Daughter of the Revolution, both in good 
standing, and yet she’s the sweetest woman in the 
world.” 

Gresham agreed heartily in this last descrip- 
tion of his hostess, though her other qualifications 
54 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

rather puzzled him. Nevertheless, he expressed 
his appreciation of them in a vague but satisfying 
“Fancy now!’’ and Forbes went on: 

“Yes, sir, mother’s a Daughter of the Revolu- 
tion, and I was asking her only last night what she 
thought the chapter would say when they heard 
she’s been harbouring a Red Coat?” 

“Ah! but you see,” Gresham pointed out, 
“we’ve all taken to khaki!” 

“But I was telling you about my little girl,” 
Forbes resumed. “Well, she got book learning at 
school, her mother has watched out for her man- 
ners and her general character, and she’s had a 
good business training with her old dad. She’s 
got a natural talent for business, that child has, 
and her opinion on a set of account books is worth 
having, I tell you. Just lands on things — and 
right every time.” 

“I should have said,” commented Gresham, 
“that she is remarkably well educated.” 

“Along certain lines she is. But outside of 
them she knows nothing. Nothing about the 
world. Nothing about men and women. We 
never encouraged her to be very intimate with any 
particular girl friend. She’s had dozens of ’em 
staying at The House, but we never wanted her 
to go visiting round much. Friends are all right, 
55 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

but friends’ friends may be almost anything. So 
we tried to make it so pleasant for her at home 
that it wouldn’t bother her to stay there. Folks 
thought we was funny about her, but I hope it 
will turn out all right. She’ll come right up when 
we take her travelling.” 

^‘Then you’re going to travel.” 

“For a year or two. We always planned we 
would as soon as Dot was through school. But 
business sort of took hold of me and mother was 
having the pergola and the conservatory built that 
spring. The next year she had the roof stained 
and the parquet floors put down. That was last 
year. An’ this year ? Well, I don’t know how it 
is. We just didn’t get started.” 

“Most luckily for me.” 

Forbes nodded. “But I guess we’ll be return- 
ing your call next year,” he laughed. “Daughter 
has got to see the world; bump up against people 
— good and bad — and I propose to be there with 
the arnica bottle when she looks for the bruises. 
I’ll start her on her own country. She ought to 
see the places where we made our history, and 
where we’re making it now. And then we’ll 
cross over. I guess we’ll have a good time if we 
ever get started. I’ve got some good men here 
with me, and I can keep in touch with them. 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Yes,” he ended, with rueful determination, ‘‘I 
guess we’ll have to make it next year.” 

Could anything, Gresham reflected, clash with 
these plans more thoroughly than Abraham Pet- 
ty’s ? Upon Dot’s marriage the whole fabric would 
collapse. It had struck Gresham as strange even 
while Mr. Forbes was setting forth his intention 
that the contingency of his daughter falling in 
love and leaving him never seemed to occur to 
her masterful father. How, Gresham wondered, 
would he receive Mr. Petty’s pretensions ? If that 
ardent suitor phrased them to the father-in-law 
of his choosing as he had just phrased them to 
his unsympathetic confidant, Gresham could im- 
agine the result of the last portion of them. It 
was an amusing little comedy, the spectator told 
himself. Stage father, ingenue daughter, comic 
lover and complacent mother: all had played 
their parts well in the first act, and it behooved 
him to return to The House where the second 
scene was, doubtless, even now set. The play 
was interesting, but was it quite a comedy ? The 
lover was such a bounder and the heroine so much 
too good for him. His hope lay all with the stage 
father. There seemed to be no hero to save the 
situation; no young Lochinvar coming out of the 
West. But it never did to take too much for 


57 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

granted in these things that life and love wrote. 
Those authors, old enough surely to know better, 
broke all the rules of art. They laughed at the 
unities and ignored the “structure of the drama'’ 
so laboriously built up by the critics. 

So Lord Gresham finding that his pipe was out 
and his last match gone, went back to his place in 
the audience. 


CHAPTER XI 


H e had scant time to change into his evening 
things before dinner. This custom he re- 
tained in spite of his host’s laughing dissuasion. 
Mr. Forbes dined in whatever seemed cool and 
adapted for lounging. But in the face of Mrs. 
Forbes Gresham read another verdict. It was 
eminently fitting, she was convinced, that the 
occupant of a ‘‘suite for guest with own maid or 
valet” should live up to the demands of fashionable 
life. Also the guest’s formal costume seemed to 
demand something festive in the array of his host- 
esses, and to this demand Mrs. Forbes and her 
daughter were ready and glad to respond. Their 
plaint was never that they had nothing to wear. 
It was rather for excuses to wear what they had, 
and a considerable element of the pleasure they 
derived from Gresham’s society was that every 
evening he furnished such excuse. 

And nightly he sat in the softly lighted dining- 
room and marvelled. Such perfect service and 
appointments, such charming women and such 
stimulating conversation he might have looked 
for in Newport or New York. And looked, per- 
59 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

haps, m vain. Mrs. Forbes and Dot in their soft 
chiffons and laces were even prettier than in their 
daytime attire, and Gresham had met many a 
man of importance in the commerce of the world 
who lacked the human sympathy, the humorous 
insight and the kindly philosophy of John Forbes. 
He was growing accustomed to the peculiarity of 
accent and intonation which had at first repelled 
him, and was finding interest and instruction in 
the terse, expressive use of word and phrase which 
gave to the English language almost the idiomatic 
richness and rapidity of the French. 

The second act of the drama was, indeed, in 
progress when Gresham returned to the porch. 
Dorothy and her father were on the stage, and 
Gresham saw, to his dismay, that Dorothy had 
been crying. Nay, she was even then crying, and 
the attempt at self-control which she made upon 
sight of Gresham proved quite ineffectual. She 
wept forlornly. 

‘‘Now, baby,” her father admonished her, “it’s 
perfect nonsense for you to go on like this. He 
had no business to come up here bothering you, 
and ril leave it to Captain Gresham. . . .” 

“No, no, dad,” Dorothy suddenly articulate, 
implored. “You must not tell Captain Gresham; 
you really mustn’t.” 


6o 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

But Forbes went on quite unperturbed. ‘‘Fll 
leave it to Captain Gresham if there was anything 
in your manner — as you say there must have been 
— to young Petty the other night to encourage 
that puppy to come up this afternoon and pro- 
pose, simply because Samantha has broken her 
mother’s heart and he’s got a few measly dollars.” 

Gresham, finding himself suddenly invested with 
a part in the play, threw himself into it with char- 
acteristic ardour. If he were to be confidential 
brother or bachelor uncle he was resolved to make 
a success of it. 

“Nothing whatever,” was his encouraging de- 
cision. “My dear Miss Forbes, I wouldn’t let it 
trouble me for a moment. The man’s imperti- 
nence is insane.” 

“That’s what I tell her,” cried Mr. Forbes, 
putting an arm round his agitated companion in 
the large chair. “That’s what I was telling her 
just as you came up. The money’s turned him 
crazy, that’s all, and he had to come up here and 
work it off.” 

“No, no, no,” said Dot, shaking her head for- 
lornly. “I must have said something to him to 
make him believe that I cared. Why, father, he 
seemed just so sure'* 

When Gresham heard this, his own uncharitable 

6i 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

reading of the situation, set forth in a tearful voice 
by the culprit, he fell upon it tooth and nail and 
rent it. 

‘‘I am sure you did nothing of the sort. The 
chap is balmy’’ — he caught a wet glance of ques- 
tion in Dot’s eyes and explained — ‘^mad, you 
know, I mean, about himself. Why, I met him 
down in the village and he seems to consider him- 
self a mixture of Apollo, Minerva, Napoleon and 
your Pierpont Morgan here — irresistible and all- 
powerful is his estimate of himself.” 

‘‘Yes, that’s just it,” wailed Dot. “ I can’t make 
him see; he wouldn’t understand. He would give 
me a week to think it over in, and I know he’s 
quite sure of what my answer will be.” 

“There, there, there, baby,” soothed her father. 
“You sha’n’t have to answer him at all. I’ll at- 
tend to that. I guess he’s not the first young man 
I’ve had to attend to in just that way, and I don’t 
know as I can hope that he’ll be the last.” 

“I am afraid you can’t,” smiled Gresham; and 
Dot found heart enough to smile a sad, wet little 
smile. 

“But you won’t tell him, dear,” she pleaded, 
“until the week is up. It might seem sort of un- 
kind, you know. If he likes to think what he does 
we might as well let him think so for a week.” 

62 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Mrs. Forbes hurried out at this moment to say 
that Dot was wanted at the telephone. 

“Who is it.f^’’ the girl asked, still under the 
shelter of her father’s shadow. “Who wants me, 
mother.?” 

“Abraham Petty, for one,” chuckled John 
Forbes. 

“Yes, it is Abraham. How did you guess it?” 
cried his wife. 

“I’ll go and attend to his business,” said Forbes 
grimly. “You stay out here, honey bunch, and 
get your eyes cooled olF a bit. Why, Abraham 
Petty ain’t worth crying about. You hear what 
Captain Gresham thinks of him, don’t you ?” 

Gresham had very promptly kept his word to 
the bucolic lover. 


63 


CHAPTER XII 


S TILL in their roles of confidential uncle and 
ingenue heroine, Gresham and Dot went out 
among the roses in the pergola after dinner that 
evening. Dot was still a little shaken and down- 
cast, and Gresham was still indignant and protec- 
tive. Moods could not fit one another more neatly, 
and Dot found herself greatly soothed and ener- 
getically championed. 

“But about this week now.?*’ said Gresham, 
when other aspects of the affair had received their 
due attention. “About leaving this chap in happy 
ignorance for a week — I don’t like that, you know.” 
“No.?” queried Dot. 

“No,” repeated Gresham. “Of course the 
chap’s a cad and a bounder and all that, but I 
wouldn’t do a thing like that to a dog. It’s cruel, 
it’s dastardly, it takes the very heart out of a man 
to be told at the end that all the time he was plan- 
ning and hoping and building castles in the air 
the woman had been quite decided to have noth- 
ing to do with him or his castles. For God’s 
sake. Miss Forbes, don’t do it. Tell the brute 
to-morrow. Let me, let your father, let anybody 
64 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

tell him, telephone to him, send him a telegram, 
do anything except let him go on hoping that you 
cared. In his case it is believing that you cared, 
when all the time you don’t/’ 

“Why, of course. Captain Gresham, I will have 
dad tell him to-morrow if you feel that way. I 
just hoped it would seem more polite to let him 
think I was thinking it over, and then he could 
say to himself, ‘ She refused me in the end, but it 
took her a week to make up her mind.’ That’s 
better than, ‘I asked her, but she wouldn’t think 
of it.’ But, of course. I’ll do as you think best. 
Dad shall tell him to-morrow; and now, please, 
Mr. Gresham, talk to me about something else; 
take my mind off Abraham.” 

“ If you will suggest the subject,” he challenged 
her, “I will talk. What would you like ?” 

“Well, there is us,” said Dot. “At least, 
there’s you. I guess you’ve heard all there is to 
hear about me; but tell me something about 
yourself. I was at a luncheon the other day, and 
the girls were asking me about you, and I was 
surprised to find how little I really knew. Where 
do you live ? Tell me about your home.” 

“No, no,” said Gresham, “don’t let me begin 
about my home. That’s one of my enthusiasms; 
I should bore you dreadfully about it.” 

65 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

‘‘Bore me,” she replied, “you couldn’t; I have 
never been bored in my life.” 

This was so startlingly at variance with the 
mental attitude of most of his friends that Gresham 
paused to consider it, and in the pause Dot fell to 
considering him. She was not given to much 
thought of things that did not concern her nearly, 
and this guest of her father’s had not before struck 
her as a very human sort of person, certainly she 
had not thought of him as a possible friend of her 
own. He was too old for that, too absorbed and, 
for all his gaiety and friendliness, too impersonal. 
Now, however, in the glamour of the moonlight, 
he seemed quite transformed. His years — they 
were perhaps thirty-five — fell from him. He be- 
gan to assume a certain romantic interest. She 
had never seen him in earnest about anything ex- 
cept this question of Abraham, and somehow his 
earnestness seemed to bring him nearer. She 
wondered whether his continual gaiety were a pose, 
whether he was ever lonely or disheartened or 
enthusiastic like other people, and she wondered, 
too, why he kept himself hedged in by that man- 
ner of careless insincerity. 

“Tell me,” she repeated, this time more earnestly 
— “tell me something about your home,” and she 
settled herself more comfortably upon her bench, 
66 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

and made room for him beside her. He declined 
the proffered place. 

“If you don’t mind,” said he, “Fll stand or 
walk about. Talking about the dear old place 
always makes me restless. Well, to begin with, 
it’s very old. It’s a sort of Sir Walter Scottish 
castle. It used to have a moat and a portcullis, 
and a jolly little balcony up at the top for throwing 
boiling oil on one’s uninvited guests, and it has 
belonged to us — the Greshams — for hundreds and 
hundreds of years. In fact, the Greshams built 
it. The Greshams have also been going on for 
some hundreds of years, you see. Well, of course, 
lately they haven’t used the portcullis much, and 
the boiling oil gallery is one of the gardener’s 
great points of vantage. He fills it every spring 
with creepers that sway and blossom up there in 
the air. Awfully jolly they look. Then inside 
there’s any amount of oak panelling and old pic- 
tures and long passages and a great centre hall 
where all the retainers slept in the merry old days 
when if the lords of the manor didn’t take care of 
their men the enemy might ride up and drive 
them away, leaving the lord of the manor rather 
up a tree. Quite cut off from going to war or 
crusading or sacking foreign towns and neigh- 
bouring castles. It’s a truly wonderful old hall, 
67 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

though of course it's changed a bit since those 
times. My father built an organ into one end of 
it, and we generally dine there." 

^‘Have you a ghost?" asked Dot. 

‘"Oh, several," he answered proudly; “and we 
have an old Norman crypt and one proud legend 
all of our own." 

“Tell me that," Dot commanded. 

“Well," he began, “once upon a time, back 
in the mists of history, there was a big fight all 
over the country. It was chronic, you know, and 
the Greshams were always in it. In those days 
we had a very adventuresome queen; great, I 
should say, on women's suffrage and ‘swords for 
women' and all that. One morning she got into 
a tight place rowing it with a neighbour of ours, 
and when things began to go against her she 
made a bolt for our castle. Now, my greatest 
grandfather was away sacking, I think, and my 
greatest grandmother, who was in command of 
the castle, was not a suffragette. So she wouldn't 
open the door, she wouldn't let the portcullis fall. 
And the lady outside was awfully waxy about it. 
She went off to her own house in no end of a 
huff, gathered more soldiers and bowmen together, 
came back to Glendaire, knocked spots out of the 
old lady there, and carried off the son and heir as 
68 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

hostage. Her first idea was to boil him in oil — 
her second was to bury him alive; but he was a 
nice boy — the Greshams are often nice at very 
early ages.” 

“I can believe that,” laughed Dot. 

‘‘Well, this was at an exceedingly early age, 
nine hundred and something, as well as I remem- 
ber, and the young Gresham was perfectly charm- 
ing. So the old lady relented and restored him to 
his own people on condition that they never again 
would refuse welcome and sanctuary to any one 
who demanded them.” 

“That’s a lovely story,” cried his audience. 

“But that’s not the end of it,” said he. “From 
that day to this the Greshams have dined in the 
big hall and the door is always left open and a 
place is always laid for a stranger.” 

“Does he often come?” questioned Dot. 

“Not often,” he admitted. “But we’re always 
ready, you know. We’re people of our word, we 
Greshams, and we still keep our greatest grand- 
mother’s promise.” 

“I think,” said Dorothy in all sincerity, “that 
that’s the loveliest thing I ever heard of. My! 
but I’d love to go walking up some evening and 
surprise you all. Now, tell me another story! ” 

“About Glendaire?” he questioned. 

69 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Yes, about Glendaire/’ 

“Ages and ages ago,’’ he began, “no one knows 
how long ago, though we’ve had the opinion of 
several botanical duffers, some one. I’ve heard it 
was St. Patrick, planted a yew tree in our gar- 
den, and prophesied that for so long as that tree 
should live our house should rule. When it dies, 
we die too. It’s an awful thought, that while 
we’re sitting here — or rather while you’re sitting 
there, and I’m making you restless by tramping up 
and down in front of you — at this very moment a 
thunder-storm may be raging over there and cut- 
ting me off in the flower of my youth.” 

“A caterpillar would do as well,” suggested 
Dorothy buoyantly. “Most deaths nowadays are 
caused by germs one way or another. But let’s 
pretend the tree is all right. Tell me more about 
the place. Is there a garden?” 

“A garden,” he laughed; “there’s every kind 
of a garden, or, if you prefer it, there’s a garden 
of every kind. Fruit and vegetable, flower, water 
and winter; glass houses with peaches and grapes 
and things like that in them.” 

“Go on, go on,” she cried. “Go on, my mind 
is quite off Abraham.” 

“There are terraces,” he obeyed, “laid out col- 
our by colour like a rainbow. The moat has been 
70 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

filled in in parts, and in parts made to bear water 
lilies; then there are fountains and ponds and the 
stables — ^you’d love the stables, and the poor old 
house itself all battered in spots, but still beautiful 
with its twinkling windows and its flags and all, 
and the gardens and plantations framing it in. 
There — he broke off and laughed at his own 
enthusiasm, ‘T have cracked the thing up a bit. 
Now ril stop.’’ 

“But that isn’t the way to stop,” cried 
Dot. “Those aren’t the last words of your 
speech. You must say, ‘Dost thou like the pic- 
ture 

“Well, dost thou V* demanded Gresham, feeling 
that she was quite right and that his rhapsody had 
indeed been like Claude Melnotte’s. 

“Go on,” she commanded; “begin at that part: 
‘While the perfumed light stole through the mists 
of alabaster lamps.’ ” 

“Oh! I don’t know it,” he answered. 

“I do,” she cried. “Our dramatic society gave 
it the last year I was at school. It goes like this. 
You say: 

“ ‘And every air was heavy with the sighs 

Of orange-groves and music from sweet lutes, 

And murmurs of low fountains that gush forth 
I* the midst of roses! Dost thou like the picture ?’ 

71 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

^‘Then I say: 

“ ‘ Oh! as the bee upon the flower, I hang 
Upon the honey of thy eloquent tongue! 
Am not I blest ? And if I love too wildly, 
Who would not love thee like Pauline ?’ 

“Then you say: 

“ ‘ Oh, false one. 
It is the prince thou lovest, not the man/ 


“Now, you know, Fd much rather have a man 
than a prince.” 

“Really?” 

“Yes, really — I shouldn’t know how to talk to 
a prince. They make very bad friends, you know. 
You can’t trust ’em.” 

“And do you think,” he asked, “that you could 
make a friend of me ?” 

“I have,” she answered. 

And later, when they returned to the veranda 
and found Mr. and Mrs. Forbes hand in hand in 
the moonlight. Dot threw herself down beside her 
mother’s chair. 

“We’ve been having the heavenliest time,” she 
breathed. “Captain Gresham can make believe 
better than any one I ever knew.” 

“Any one could — on such a stage,” said Lord 
Gresham. 


72 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“He’s been pretending to be a lordship,” Dot 
announced. “I wish you could hear him talk.” 

Forbes looked suddenly at Gresham. “He 
ought to do it all right,” he commented. “It’s a 
great night for fancies. ‘In such a night,’” he 
began, 

“ ‘ Did Thisbe fearfully overstep the dew 
And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself.’ ” 

Again Lord Gresham marvelled. Here in the 
home of an American artisan he found the classics 
in full bloom. Not laid away in calf-skin and 
vellum, as he was accustomed to think of them, 
but playing their part in the ordinary converse of 
life. And he noticed that whereas Dorothy and 
her father took liberties with the verbs and final 
consonants of colloquial phrase, their pronuncia- 
ation of Shakespeare and Lytton was singularly 
free from error or accent. The term “self-made” 
was changing its significance for him. 


73 


CHAPTER XIII 


D ot thought a good deal about Gresham 
before she fell asleep that night. That he 
had been inventing was, of course, understood. 
Sustained invention of that sort had always been a 
favourite pastime of hers. But the readiness with 
which he did it, the glibness with which he de- 
scribed that wonderful old castle and its hall, 
made her think that he had perhaps at some time 
in his wanderings seen such a place. She wished 
she might see it too. It would be more interesting 
than places better known and more written up. 
The open door and the old yew tree appealed to 
her imagination marvellously, and the rainbow 
terraces were much in her dreams. Sometimes 
she was toiling up them while some giant Gresham 
pursued her; sometimes she was strolling down 
them while some charming Gresham wooed her. 
It was a lovely play, she decided, and could hardly 
wait for breakfast and the business of the morning 
to be over before she captured Gresham. That 
young hero, having parted with his secret, was 
74 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

rather ruefully wishing it back again, and was 
delighted to find that she had accepted his con- 
fidence as a superior sort of joke. 

“Let’s play Glendaire again,” said Dot, when 
she found her guest in the library trying to write 
a letter. “I think it’s great. I’m going to ask 
dad to let us have that open-door scheme here.” 

“You have something very like it already,” 
he answered gratefully. “When I think of Mr. 
Kenny ” 

“Don’t,” Dot cautioned him. “Think of Glen- 
daire. Tell me more about it.” 

“I’ve told you all, I can no more,” he quoted 
incorrectly. “Unless, of course, I gossip.” 

“About the neighbours ?” 

“And about the rest of us. I’m not the only 
Gresham. I’m only the head of the house.” 

“That’s the way I like you to talk,” she inter- 
rupted. “Just wait until I get my embroidery 
and then we’ll play we’re Mrs. Humphry Ward’s 
people. Of course I ought to ‘clasp my slender 
blue-veined hands behind my head and look pen- 
sively out at the rain-swept garden,’ but we’ll 
leave that part out. I haven’t time to. It’s a 
lovely day. And my veins don’t show. But 
you’re all right. Are those clothes ‘tweeds’ ?” 

“They are.” 


75 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Then we’re ofF. You were saying that you’re 
only the head of the house. Who are the arms 
and legs?” 

“My brother John is its right hand. Even 
before the governor died — — ” 

“Eh?” 

“My father, you know. Even before he died 
he had discovered what a chap John was for land- 
scape gardening and that sort of thing, and man- 
aging. So he let John have everything his own 
way. Since I came into the thing I’ve let him go 
on. He’s a queer, moody chap. A twin of mine, 
and he’s always been more or less delicate.” 

“Your only brother?” 

“Yes.” 

“Any sisters ?” 

“No! Nothing but a mother and the step- 
father she has presented to us in our old age. 
An awfully decent old chap.” 

“I don’t see,” commented Dorothy admiringly, 
“how you keep it up so well. You’ve invented 
a whole family for yourself in just a few min- 
utes.” 

“It’s no trouble at all,” he assured her. “Look 
at your friend, Claude Melnotte. Look at the 
papers any day. But I’ve come to the end of the 
family.” 


76 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Except for the ancestors. Tell me about 
some of them.” 

Spurred by her interest and by the license which 
her incredulity furnished, Lord Gresham searched 
his memory for genealogy. He was wide and 
catholic in his choice of anecdotes; anything of 
sufficient antiquity was thankfully received and 
picturesquely presented. Strongbow, Sir Uland’s 
daughter, Brian Boru, Shane O’Niel and Dermott 
McMurrogh were thrown into the branches of his 
family tree whence they looked down at Dorothy 
with as much amazement as she looked up at them. 

Many a tale of chivalry and pride did Lord 
Gresham pour into her appreciative ear. Ghosts 
and banshees made fit subjects for the dark of the 
moon. Never, Dot decided, had she encountered 
such an imagination. But of all the subjects with 
which it played she loved most to hear about 
Glendaire. He added detail unto detail until she 
could see the pictures on the walls, the flowers, 
the lawns, the wide soft meadows. He made her 
feel the spacious graciousness of its wide domain. 

“You’ve almost,” she told him once, “made me 
believe in it — made me feel that it’s real; not a 
place that only you and I know about. And it’s 
all mine. You made it for me, didn’t you ?” 

“If I could show it to you!” 

77 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

‘‘But you have. I can see it plainly, ‘In my 
mind’s eye.’ When you think of it, what country 
do you put it in ? I always leave it in Spain.” 

“I put it in Ireland.” 

“In Ireland,” Dot repeated; “that’s a funny 
place to have a castle of dreams.” 

“It’s a very good place for an Irishman’s. 
Where would you expect me to have it — adjoin- 
ing Buckingham Palace?” 

“Oh! But you’re not an Irishman.” 

“But I am,” he maintained. 

“Oh, no, you’re not,” she laughed. “I can 
remember word for word what the geography at 
school said about Ireland.” She stood up, folded 
her hands behind her and recited in sing-song 
fashion: “Ireland, a small island in the North 
Sea. The country consists of barren mountains 
and boggy valleys. On the former the peasants 
graze their miserable cattle, from the latter they 
obtain a sort of turf or peat which they use for 
fires. They are a dirty and ignorant people, liv- 
ing in huts which they share with their domestic 
animals. Now, you don’t look,” she pointed out, 
“as though you lived in a hut with domestic an- 
imals.” 

“Have you never known any Irish people,” 
Gresham asked seriously. 

78 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Never,” she answered, matter of fact at once. 
“All the help in this town is either German or 
coloured.” 

“Help.?” repeated Gresham. “Help?” 

“Yes, help,” she answered. “Servants, you 
know. In some towns there are Irish, but weVe 
never had any of them here. I guess no one 
would be willing to try it.” 

“And do you mean to say,” demanded Gresham 
hotly, “that you believe that ? That you mean to 
insinuate that only servants can be expected to 
come from one of the dearest, oldest, most beauti- 
ful and most unhappy countries in the world.” 

“Now, see,” she urged. “Don’t let us talk 
nonsense any more. I’ll pretend as much as you 
like about Glendaire and your family and all. 
That’s a good game. But don’t pretend that 
Ireland is that kind of place — dear and beautiful 
— and that you come from it. I’ve read lots and 
lots of books about it. I’ve read Thackeray’s 
‘Irish Sketches.’” 

“Oh! Thackeray be ” 

“Well, perhaps he is,” she suggested, with the 
irreverence which so often amazed him. “But 
all the books are about Biddies and Micks and 
Pats.” 

“My name is Pat,” he announced belligerently. 

79 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“What?’’ she cried. “What did you say?” 

“My name is Pat,” he repeated. “Patrick 
Gresham.” 

“Well, now I know you’re Glendaireing. I’ve 
known your first name all the time.” 

“Then what is it ?” 

“Lord. I remember your name in the papers: 
Captain Lord Gresham. I know a girl called 
Carrie Lord. She used to go to school with me.” 

“That’s one of my titles. The one I used in the 
army,” he explained. 

But at this she only laughed again, and she was 
still enjoying what she considered his attempt at 
consistent local colour when some domestic duty 
called her away. 


8o 


CHAPTER XIV 


A braham petty came no more to The 
- House after the day of his meeting with 
Pat, and no one spoke of him, until one evening 
when Gresham and Dot were in the summer house 
and he asked what had become of that over- 
confident suitor. 

“Oh, he’s all right again,” laughed Dot. “I 
met him to-day, and he seems to have thought 
I proposed to him, and that he was forced to re- 
fuse. He tells me that six other girls — I liked 
being included — are competing for him, and that 
he has to be very careful. ‘He isn’t,’ he says, 
‘going to be snapped up.’ ” Pat laughed. 

“He’s the most preposterous bounder,” said he, 
“that I ever encountered.” 

“You couldn’t hurt his feelings with an axe,” 
Dot amplified. “And I’ve often wondered why 
you were so excited about him, and so anxious 
that he should not be left in suspense. You really 
were,” she laughed, “quite bossy about it.” 

“I’m afraid I expected him to take the thing 
more as I did!” 

8i 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“As you did?’’ she repeated. “Did any one 
ever treat you that way ?” 

“ Keep me in suspense ? Oh, yes. But then, 
you see, I didn’t know it. I thought everything 
was all right. And instead, don’t you know ? ” 

“But I don’t know,” she complained. “Are 
you playing Glendaire now?” 

“No, there’s no Glendaire about it — I wish 
there were.” 

Dot looked at him for a moment to make sure 
that he was in earnest. “Tell me about it,” she 
begged, “that is, if you wouldn’t mind — if it 
wouldn’t hurt you. Was it long ago ?” 

“Long enough,” he answered, “since I fell in 
love with her. But only nine or ten months since 
I came back from the front and heard that she had 
changed her mind very soon after she saw the last 
of me, and that she had decided to marry a ^cher 
and, I hope, a better fellow. She’d gone on writ- 
ing to me and letting me write to her, but she never 
mentioned her change of heart because, she said, 
she feared it might grieve me. I really think that 
it was because she was afraid it would bring me 
back to England. And perhaps it gave her a sort 
of romantic glamour in her friends’ eyes to be 
getting letters from the front. You can imagine 
the attitude: ‘What I love best I give to my coun- 
82 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

try/ And you see if Td been potted by a nigger 
she need never have told a soul. She’d have 
worn that pathetic glamour forever. So she let 
me do what I didn’t want you to let this fool of 
an Abraham do — she let me believe for the whole 
two years of my service that she would marry me, 
and all the time her mind was quite made up to 
do nothing of the kind, but to marry Lord Harvey 
instead; and she did. He was a great catch.” 

“Lord Harvey! Then she was Lady Clarissa 
Paine,” cried Dot in amazement. “We read 
about her wedding.” 

“Ah!” said Gresham tritely, “I forgot the 
Sunday papers. Yes! she was the Lady Clarissa 
Paine, and she’s now Lady Harvey — a much more 
important personage than ever the Countess of 
Glamoran could have been.” 

“Then you,” cried Dot in rising amazement, 
“then you are the Earl of Glamoran.” 

“As I told you.” 

“ But how could she choose him instead of you ? 
I have seen pictures of him and of her too. She 
was lovely. Why, Captain Gresham,” and then 
she halted and tried the new name unsteadily. 
“Why, Earl — No! that isn’t right. What is the 
right thing to call you ?” 

“Pat,” he answered valiantly. “Call me Pat.” 

83 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

‘‘Oh! but I couldnV’ she wailed. '‘It’s all 
different now. There isn’t any such person in 
the world as Captain Gresham. This was the 
dream place, this the joke. Glendaire and all 
those things I thought you were inventing were 
the truth. You’re really an earl, and I,” she 
laughed unsteadily — “well I guess I’m the goat. 
Everything’s spoiled. Everything’s different, and 
oh!” she broke out suddenly, “what will dad 
say ^ He hates peers.” 

“He’s known all about it all along,” Pat made 
reply. “He doesn’t mind.” It was rather an 
unusual situation he thought. Here he was try- 
ing to explain away his rank as though it were a 
crime. “And I thought. Miss Forbes,” he went 
on, “I really thought that you understood. You 
know how often we’ve talked about Ireland and 
my place there.” 

At the news of her father’s defection Dot began 
to cry. The very foundations of her world were 
breaking up. That her father should have coun- 
tenanced this deceit! This was what people 
meant when they railed at the deceitfulness of 
man. Her father and her friend had both been 
laughing at her. 

Gresham tried to comfort her, but she was 
beyond comfort. She had been made ridiculous 
84 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

in her own eyes, and she was too young to bear 
that. Anything else she might have forgiven, 
but 

“ I’m the goat,” she wailed and refused comfort 
or explanation. 


85 


CHAPTER XV 


^‘TT’S all very well for you to say ‘Dear me^ 
X and to laugh at me like that,’’ said Dot, 
“but what I need is sympathy — not ridicule.” 

“Dear me,” repeated her father. “I had no 
idea you were serious.” 

“None of that, sir! none of that!” his daughter 
admonished him. “You always know it’s serious 
when I wait until the house is quiet, and then 
creep down like a nihilist to entertain you over 
your last cigar. And now you’ve aided and 
abetted and let me laugh and make game of a 
person out of history. He says he’s been going 
on for hundreds and hundreds of years.” 

“Earldom founded 1465, barons before that,” 
her father interjected. “I had it looked up in 
the city.” 

“And never told us,” his daughter charged him 
severely. “You’ve let mother and me go on treat- 
ing him like an ordinary planter.” 

“Well, daughter,” Forbes pointed out, “that’s 
all he IS, to us.” 

“And you have known all along,” she accused 
him. 


86 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“That his name is Patrick Gresham,” answered 
Forbes. “That he is the Earl of Glamoran. 
That he has a seat in the House of Lords which he 
never occupies, and that he has about forty thou- 
sand acres of the worst land in Ireland, and two 
or three thousand of the worst tenants. That’s 
all I know except that he’s in business in London, 
besides, and is as rich as any one would want to be.” 

“As rich as you 

“I guess so. Maybe he couldn’t realise as 
quick as I could, but he’s got the goods, all right.” 

“And how long,” she demanded, “have you 
known all these things about him ? Did Mr. 
Elliott write them to you ?” 

“No,” he answered. “No. Elliott introduced 
him simply as Captain Gresham. He told me 
who he was the first night he was here, and if you 
and mother read your Sunday papers carefully, 
you’d have known too. See here!” and he 
handed her a society sheet of the preceding Sun- 
day’s New York Herald^ “that tells about him.” 

“The Earl of Glamoran,” this invaluable social 
authority announced, “is at present travelling in 
America studying methods of tobacco culture. 

‘ His lordship, though patriotic and enthusiastic 
about his country, can hardly be described as a 
typical Irishman. He shows none of the dolce 

87 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

far niente which is supposed to characterise his 
countrymen. He saw two or three years’ service 
in South Africa, has been twice round the world, 
and, though he inherits a seat in the House of 
Lords, is always too busy to occupy it. The earl- 
dom was created in 1465, and has remained in the 
Gresham family in direct line ever since.” 

‘‘There you have him,” said Forbes. “Now, 
if you and mother had read that ” 

“But we did,” said Dot, “but we never con- 
nected it with Captain Gresham.” 

“Then you’re not as clever as your daddy thinks 
you are.” 

“All the more reason, sir,” his daughter admon- 
ished him, “for your telling us.” 

“ Honeybunch,” said her father, “I didn’t tell 
you because I was afraid that, maybe, if you knew, 
you’d have behaved different. You can’t behave 
better than you always do, and I don’t want to see 
you any different; just your ordinary everyday ways 
are good enough for anybody. Of course mother’s 
all right — mother’s a Palmer — but I thought maybe 
it would fuss you so I just didn’t tell you. So you 
have been playing around for more than a week 
with what Joshua Vinney calls a haughty British 
aristocrat. And you’ve given him something to 
think of.” 


88 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“But all the time he was fooling me and you 
were letting him. Oh, Daddy, I never thought 
you could do it.” 

“And another thing,” Forbes pleaded in further 
extenuation: “he didn’t want to go round like an 
animal in a menagerie. And if you and mother 
knew you had an earl in tow there’s no knowing 
what kind of an exhibition you’d make of him. 
All he wanted was to stay here quietly for a spell. 
He’ll take up his title again when he goes back to 
his friends. ‘Ships that pass in the night,’ my 
darling. Don’t you worry your pretty head about 
him. He won’t be around here very much longer.” 


89 


CHAPTER XVI 


I N a day or two Dorothy recovered from her 
surprise — an hour or two had been enough to 
cure her resentment — and was on terms of almost 
the old bantering intimacy with the personage to 
whom she referred as ‘‘our noble and distinguished 
guest’’ in successful effort to aggravate him. 

“I wish,” he often assured her, “that I had never 
confided my guilty secret to you. ‘You used to be 
so kind.’” 

“To my friend. Captain Gresham, I was kind. I 
admired him,” she bubbled, “awfully, and I think 
now, sadly and too late, that he reciprocated. I 
shall remain true to him. No empty title shall 
swerve me, me lord. ‘’Twas the man I lovest, 
not the prince,’ though he once misjudged me 
about it.” 

She gave Pat no time to reply to this rhapsody. 
They were jogging out to the tobacco fields pro- 
saically enough in Forbes’s buggy and as they 
jogged she talked. She had rather shunned 
silences since her discovery of Pat’s identity. She 
clamoured no more for Glendaire stories. Now 
she swept on. 


90 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“If I were a lord/’ said Dot, “the thing that I 
should most enjoy would be the feeling that every- 
thing was planned for me. You know just what 
your life is going to be. You know just what your 
responsibilities are going to be and you can get 
ready for them. You know just where you’re 
going to live; you know just how much money 
you’re going to have ” 

“It’s not quite all arranged, don’t you know,” 
Pat remonstrated — “a chap can travel a bit even 
if he be a lord, and as for knowing where one’s 
going to live, why, nearly all the old houses at 
home and in England are let to you Americans.” 

“Well, but,” she persisted, “you know who you 
are. You’re the Earl of Glamoran, and you’ll 
keep right on being the Earl of Glamoran till the 
end of things. I’m Dorothy Forbes, now; but I 
don’t know what I may be before I die.” 

“Dorothy Petty,” he suggested hopefully. “The 
ardent Abraham might forgive your refusal if you 
whistled him back prettily.” 

Dot did not answer for some time. She devoted 
her attention to the horse for a space, but when she 
spoke again it was still upon the same subject. 

“That,” she said thoughtfully, “would be even 
more monotonous than being a lord. I should 
simply go on living here at Edgecombe all my life, 

91 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

and, although Fd hate to think of going away from 
the old place and from dad and mother and The 
House, yet I think Fd hate worse to know that I 
was never going. I often wonder what God means 
to do with me.’^ 

In all their many conversations she had never 
given a hint of religious feeling or conviction of 
any sort and Pat was amazed by the earnestness 
and simplicity with which she framed the last re- 
mark. Falling in with her mood he answered 
quite as simply and quite as earnestly: 

‘‘He made you, I think, to be beautiful and good 
and to rout all those unpleasant theories about 
plainness and misery being essential to good- 
ness.” 

“Of course,” Dorothy continued, “He made me 
for something; and sometimes I think that He 
made me for something special. You see. He’s 
given me so much, such parents, such a home, and 
Fm very healthy, and most people think I’ve got 
rather good brains; I have never done anything 
with them,” she admitted, with a rueful little 
laugh, “but Fm pretty young yet to do anything 
but get ready. Sometimes I sit on the porch and 
look away off over the hills and wonder if He’ll 
lead out into the world, and what He’ll find for 
me to do there. I am all ready, and even if I have 
92 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

to be unhappy, I won’t care. I have been happy 
every day of my life for nineteen years and I guess 
I ought to be able to stand a little of the other 
thing now.” 

“ But why should you think that,” urged Pat — 
‘‘why should you not go on being happy and mak- 
ing other people happy, too .? Go out into the 
world if you want to, but don’t be miserable there. 
It is a very jolly place if you take it in the proper 
way.” 

“What is the proper way?” she asked. 

“Well,” he answered judicially after some 
thought, “I should say that the proper way to 
take the world is very much as you take your 
father. You know he is bigger and stronger and 
older than you are, but you’re not a bit afraid 
of him. You expect him to give you everything 
you want, and just because you do so expect, he 
does it. It’s all rot my advising you like this, but 
that’s the trick as I’ve worked it out. And be sure 
you enjoy everything as it comes along. Nothing 
pleases the world better than that does.” 

“That is like dad,” Dot agreed. “He just 
loves to give me things and to see that I’m happy 
with them.” 

“And so will the world,” said Pat; “you wait 
and see.” 


93 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“But Fve had so much already/’ Dot protested. 
“All those things I told you about. And then 
there is dad’s money — I suppose I had better 
count that, too. Do you know he’s very rich ?” 

“Is he?” questioned Pat. 

“Awfully rich,” she answered. “ But it isn’t the 
kind of tainted money you read about. He never 
hurt any one, dad didn’t. I suppose you think I 
wouldn’t know if he did, but I guess I would. I’m 
around with him all the time, and I never yet saw a 
man that seemed to have anything against father. 
They never scowl at him nor look mean when he’s 
around. He just makes money running the mills 
and growing tobacco. And although the mill 
hands all belong to unions, we’ve never had a 
strike, except a sympathetic one, when the men 
all over the East went out together. Our men 
thought dad would be hard on them for that, but 
he knew they couldn’t help it and he believes in 
unions, so it was all right after all.” 

“He’s a very wonderful man,” said Pat sin- 
cerely. “He’s always surprising me, as, in fact, 
you all are. I have read an awful lot about 
America and some of the things were true about 
New York and Newport and places like that; one 
might just as well be at home across the water as 
in some of the houses in New York; but I never 


94 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

was prepared for anything like you and your 
people.’’ 

“Well, that’s funny,” said she. “I’m sure 
we’re ordinary enough. Why, there are lots and 
lots of towns just like this, with people in them 
just like us. I guess that’s the reason we don’t 
get into books; we’re too common,” and she 
crinkled her dainty little nose. “But say,” she 
went on, “I don’t believe books can be much 
good, anyway, because mother and I have read 
hundreds of novels about the British aristocracy, 
and we never read about anybody one bit like you.” 

“For the same reason,” answered Pat — “we’re 
too common.” 

“You don’t fool me again,” she laughed. “I 
know better now than I did that night in the per- 
gola, and I know you’re not one bit common. 
Even the newspaper said that you were an unu- 
sual Irishman — more energetic, more ambitious 
than the rest.” 

“More restless,” he corrected. “I love every 
stone and tree in Glendaire. I love the old ser- 
vants and the old horses. The old horse that I 
learned to ride on is as well as ever he was. I love 
the house and I can endure the neighbours, but 
after I have been there for a month or two, I get 
restless and want to be away, out in the world 
95 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

again. It was restlessness that brought me here — 
restlessness, not altruism, that makes me want to 
try the tobacco. Of course, I hope that it will 
benefit the poor old codgers who look to us for 
everything, but even if it fails, I sha’n’t mind so 
much — ril try something else.” 

“I don’t call that restlessness,” said Dot — 
“that’s what we call ambition.” 

“Well, then,” said Pat, “I wonder what you’d 
say of my brother John. He’s my twin — five 
minutes .younger than I am, and yet he’s so differ- 
ent from me that I love him, actually love him, as 
if he were not a relation.” 

“That’s a funny thing to say,” she laughed. 

“It’s a true thing,” he assured her, “though it 
isn’t very often said perhaps. Well, as I was say- 
ing, there’s John, five minutes younger than I am, 
and so like me in size and shape and face and 
colour that you couldn’t tell us apart.” 

“I think I could,” she interrupted. “But never 
mind that; go on.” 

“Well, John would rather do anything on earth 
than leave Glendaire. When he was at Eton, and 
later at Oxford, he bolted for the place at every 
vacation; wouldn’t go on visits to the other boys’ 
houses; wouldn’t hear of the continent; wouldn’t 
stay in town with the mater — who by that time was 
96 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

married again and settled in London. All John 
wanted was to get back to Glendaire and there, 
with only the servants, he is as happy as a king. 
At least,” he corrected, “as happy as the poor old 
chap ever is — he’s so delicate.” 

“That’s too bad,” said Dot in sympathy. 

“Yes,” he agreed, “the poor chap doesn’t seem 
to have been very lucky. There’s something wrong 
with his constitution. But, of course, he’s all 
right sometimes and is as well as any of us; and as 
I was telling you, his one idea is Glendaire. He’s 
been taking care of it now for twelve or thirteen 
years, and my word ! but he’s made a success of it. 
It’s ten times the place it used to be, and I couldn’t 
have gone wandering about the world as I have 
done, if he hadn’t been there to assume my respon- 
sibility. The tenants look upon me — their rightful 
lord — as a sort of ornamental outsider, but it’s to 
John they turn in all practical matters. They even 
call him ‘the master,’ while I’m only ‘my lord.’ 
He understands them and manages them wonder- 
fully. I can’t help feeling that they’re right,” he 
ended somewhat ruefully, “John should have been 
Lord of the Manor and I the younger brother — 
the wanderer on the face of the earth.” 

“ That would be rather nice,” Dot agreed. “ I’d 
get back my Captain Gresham then.” 

97 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

‘‘Do you miss him much 

“Sometimes, he used to tell such lovely stories.” 

“ Before I leave Edgecombe,” vowed Lord 
Gresham, “I shall have altogether supplanted him 
in your young affections.” 

“You’ll never do that,” said Dot. “I loved him 
with all the first young enthusiasm of my fresh 
young heart.” 

“You’re forgetting Abraham.” 

“And if I were,” she retorted, “why should you 
unkindly remind me of him ? My dear Captain 
Gresham, ‘my captain, oh, my captain’ never did 
that. He used to try to make me forget Abraham.” 

“Very well,” said Pat. “It’s my turn now. 
I’ll take your mind off Gresham.” 

“You talk,” said Dot, with a laugh, “as though 
my mind were a sort of sticking plaster. Per- 
haps it’s not such a bad simile. I’m very constant 
in my attachments.” 

“And I’m persistent.” 

“And mother’s hospitable. You’ll have plenty 
of time. All the time there is. Whew, but the 
sun’s hot.” 


98 


CHAPTER XVII 


T he sun which shone so hotly down on Doro- 
thy Forbes and Lord Gresham shone as 
brightly but more kindly upon the Honourable 
John Gresham as he stood on the steps of Glendaire 
Castle, drawing on his gloves and watching the en- 
dearments passing between his nervous chestnut 
mare and the elderly groom who stood at her head. 

“Great old place,” said John as he put his toe 
into the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. 
“Is Pluto chained. Darby?” 

“He is, your Honour,” the man answered. 

“Pm leaving him at home this morning because 
I intend to ride round the coverts and take a look 
at the young pheasants.” 

“Well, he’s chained, your Honour, out behind 
the coach house. He’s as safe as a church.” 

If Darby’s idea of ecclesiastical stability were 
represented by the security of Pluto, his religion 
must have been in parlous case, for John having 
trotted down the avenue to a point where a turf 
road branched off from it, was conscious of an 
irregular banging clatter behind him. Turning in 
99 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

his saddle he discovered Pluto, most docile of blood- 
hounds, in hot chase with his chain, its staple, and 
a section of ancient oak depending from his collar. 
There was an expression so blended of triumph 
and appeal in his faithful eyes and dripping tongue 
that John was constrained to dismount to relieve 
him of his impediments (though they had not im- 
peded him in the least) and to abandon his design 
upon the pheasant runs. 

Even the energetic Dorothy Forbes seeing Glen- 
daire in the glory of its May time would have 
understood that a man could find satisfaction there 
for all his ambition and activities. Hawthorn — 
pink and white — drooping yellow laburnum, rho- 
dodendrons, horse-chestnuts in spiky bloom filled 
the air with perfume and the land with colour. 
John Gresham, as he rode, stuck his cap in his 
pocket and let the flowering branches brush his 
hair. And Pluto at his humbler altitude pattered 
through buttercups, daisies, blue-bells and violets, 
cowslips and primroses. 

“ I never saw,” thought the Honourable John, as 
he rode upon his way, “so wonderful a spring as 
this.” 

Irish springs, in his era, must have been pro- 
gressively beautiful, for each of them had earned 
this encomium. 


ICX3 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

His customary air of heavy and aloof despon- 
dency was affected somewhat by the beauty all about 
him. He looked almost happy as he followed the 
grass roads and reached at last the steep pastures 
on the uplands. There he stopped to speak to a 
boy in charge of the flocks. His questions were so 
simple and direct that they drew direct and simple 
answers even from the tortuous mind of this peas- 
ant lad. It was true enough as the wandering Pat 
had told Dorothy that John knew how to get on 
with these people. Three minutes sufficed to draw 
from Rory all the information he possessed or John 
desired. And several times during his ride he held 
other such conversations. With the head game- 
keeper at whose house he stopped he held longer 
conference. Everywhere he was dictatorial, mas- 
terful, and nowhere was there an insinuation — by 
so much as the flicker of an eyelid — that he was not 
master. 

Presently he finished his inspection. He looked 
up at the sun, guessed it to be eleven, corroborated 
his guess, for he was a man who trusted nature 
more than watchmakers and liked to put his ques- 
tions straight to headquarters. It must not be 
inferred that he always refused help and advice 
from other minds. On the contrary the library of 
Glendaire Castle, antiquated, priceless and neg- 


lOI 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

lected in all other departments, contained the very 
newest books on natural science. There also 
might be found much modern and ancient lore of 
sun-dials, hedges of box and yew, roses, landscape 
gardening, shrubs and evergreens, and all that per- 
tains to beauty out of doors. 

Glendaire bore eloquent and silent witness to 
the success with which John studied and applied 
these gentle arts. Even the man himself, doomed 
from birth to illness and disappointment, showed 
the softening influence of these pursuits. From 
time to time, he halted in his ride to observe how 
intelligently Nature had accepted his hints and 
such assistance as he had given her; how profusely 
she had fulfilled his expectations; how generously 
she had exceeded his hopes. The pictures he had 
conjured up in the long winter evenings, the growth 
and maturity he had waited for during many un- 
flowering years, the vistas he had cut through ob- 
scuring thickets, the surprises he had devised in 
unexpected spots, all were as his mind’s eye had 
seen them, as his mind’s despondent habit had 
told him they would never be. 

Pat had described his twin brother as cracked 
about Glendaire,” and he had not overstated the 
case. To Pat the place meant pride and pleasure 
now and rest in the placid years to come. Its 


102 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

beauty stirred him. Its associations — save those 
connected with his own parents — sometimes bored 
and sometimes overwhelmed him. But they never 
occupied his matter-of-fact attention for very long 
at a time. He sincerely loved and pitied his deli- 
cate brother; made him a handsome allowance; 
paid him a generous salary to act as his agent and 
left the management of Glendaire absolutely in 
John’s hands, as, during his later years, the earl, 
his father, had done. This had been John’s one 
stipulation. He would brook no dictation, no 
division of authority and responsibility. While 
Pat was satisfied with his brother’s stewardship 
John would administer the estate. When Pat 
ceased to be satisfied John would resign. He 
would accept no modification of his dictatorship. 

And Pat had never tried to interfere in his own 
smoothly running affairs. He never even asked to 
see the wheels go round. His cheerful optimistic 
nature suffered partial eclipse in his brother’s 
moody presence and he accepted with meekness, 
though with some amusement, the position of 
casual guest into which John always forced him. 
Pat had often writhed in spirit over his five minutes 
of seniority and he gladly ignored them when John 
set him the example. When his African cam- 
paigns were over and he had brought back a 
103 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

brother officer to recuperate at Glendaire, the 
stranger had found it difficult indeed to believe 
that this grave gentleman — so like his friend in 
face and body; so unlike in mind and bearing — 
was not indeed the host. He was not a subtle man. 
Indeed, he belonged to a profession in which sub- 
tlety and ‘‘too much thinking on the event” might 
mean disaster and defeat — but he saw a fact to 
which every one had been blind. 

“That Johnny,” he elegantly phrased his dis-"® 
covery, “really believes that the whole little shoot- 
ing match belongs to him. It’s not actin’ with 
him, you know.” 

And long after this Columbus had gone back to 
his regiment “that Johnny” went on believing and 
every one went on being blind. A little eccen- 
tricity of manner might be overlooked in a man 
carrying the curse and the fear that went always 
close beside John Gresham. For there was yet 
another collection of modern books at Glendaire, 
but not in the pleasant library. They were not 
even in the tower chamber called the oak room, 
flanking the great door, in which John Gresham 
and his secretary, young Jarvis Burke, transacted 
the business of the estate. They were securely 
locked away in a chest which stood at the foot 
of John’s bed and they all dealt with one branch 


104 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

of learning — the psycopathic. In vain the local 
physician, and such brighter professional lights as 
the more violent outbreaks of Gresham’s disorder 
brought to Glendaire, remonstrated with him. 
The books were written by professional men — for 
professional men. Distinctly, with a cold detach- 
ment, they set out symptoms, diagnosis and prog- 
nosis of epilepsy and its allied horrors of insanity 
and disease. John Gresham had for years known 
^uite clearly that neither life nor death promised 
much for him. There was no trace of the disease 
in his ancestry; and he knew that though this fact 
left his ultimate recovery possible, it also left other 
unspeakable outcomes equally possible. He knew 
the nature and the danger of the blasts of wrath 
which swept over him, his habitual mood of almost 
suicidal gloom. He knew, too, what he owed to 
the quiet, the calm beauty and the regular out- 
door life which Pat and Glendaire gave him. In 
all his morbid reading regularity of life and an 
open-air existence were insisted upon. Well, he 
had them, and they meant his chance; his chance 
for life and sanity and happiness. 

For happiness was not so far from the Honour- 
able John as his customary gravity would suggest. 
It was within a half-hour’s ride from one of his 
battlemented gates and on the morning that Pluto 

105 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

put the young pheasants out of the question and 
into the future John turned his horse’s head 
toward Renira Banbridge. His own heart always 
turned toward her in pleasure as in sorrow and 
to-day it was the hope of pleasure which drew him 
to her; the hope of inducing her to return to 
Glendaire with him for lunch and an hour among 
the rhododendrons afterward. And so eager was 
he in this desire that he neither faltered nor drew 
rein at the necessity of inviting one of Renira’s 
sisters to the former and more substantial feast. 


106 


CHAPTER XVIII 


S IR RICHARD BANBRIDGE, Bart., J. P., 
etc., was sunning himself in a bevy of pointers 
and setters upon the steps of '‘The Monastery.” 
He wore an old hunting coat and a general air of 
the sportsman in the olF season and he smoked a 
short pipe and read a pink paper with most picto- 
rial effect. Had Sir Richard wished to bask in the 
light of gentler society he might easily have done 
so, for the Monastery, untrue to all its traditions 
and vows, furnished sanctuary to no less than four 
examples of feminine charm. Lady Banbridge 
and her youngest daughter, the Renira of John 
Gresham’s dreams, represented beauty mature and 
in the bud. Joan and Betty represented mind tri- 
umphant and militant. Renira’s ambition was to 
satisfy John Gresham’s love. Joan lived in the 
hope of some day devoting herself actively to the 
propaganda for women’s suffrage. Betty had al- 
ready devoted herself to the study of Gaelic and 
spent her days in vivid and hairy tweeds, uncom- 
fortable, but of native manufacture. In the even- 
ing she blossomed out in native lace and poplin as 
107 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

beautiful as her morning things were hideous. 
Now it happened, strangely enough, that these two 
intellectual sisters were remarkably stupid-looking. 
Their long heavy faces suggested the portraits left 
to us of George Eliot; like her they bore a far- 
away but unmistakable resemblance to a tired 
horse. This equine cast of feature might have 
been expected to endear them to their father but 
did not. He was frankly bored and puzzled by 
them. 

But Renira who was, as her sisters lost no 
opportunity of pointing out to her, more illogical, 
flippant and ignorant than they could have be- 
lieved possible in a human adult, had a face which 
sparkled with intelligence. Her blue eyes saw 
everything within their range, her quick tongue 
found words and comment — of a sort which froze 
her sisters’ erudition in their throats — for all that 
her eyes fell upon. Joan and Betty, stiff and 
silent, were accustomed to accept congratulations 
upon their possession of so clever and entertain- 
ing a sister — accustomed but not resigned. They 
knew that once started upon their own beloved 
topics they could out-talk Renira who had not a 
single conviction to sustain her conversation. It 
is possible that the guests knew this also. It is 
certain that they abstained from assisting the 

io8 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

sisters to mount their hobbies and always dragged 
them off when they managed to get a leg over on 
their own account. Sir Richard, their sire, and 
as much a stranger to them as any wandering 
guest could be, also preferred the more responsive 
Renira to her inconvenient sisters. He considered 
Betty to be only a little less than a lunatic and a 
good deal less than a lady, since she had tried to 
convert him to wear a kilt and let his hair grow 
long. 

“Bless my soul, woman,” he remonstrated. 
“Do you want to take my breeches from me ? A 
pretty figure Fd cut in the hunting field without 
’em.” 

It was characteristic of Sir Richard that he saw 
himself always in the hunting field and costume. 
As a matter of fact, he was rarely seen out of them. 

“A M.F.H. in petticoats!” he chuckled, “the 
dogs themselves would be laughing at me, to say 
nothing of the horses.” 

“But your ancestors, the original Celts, wore 
kilts,” Betty urged with a blush. She might or 
might not have convictions, but she certainly had 
very proper feelings, and this conversation was 
playing havoc with them. Only her strong devo- 
tion to the cause could have induced her to em- 
bark upon the subject of kilts with a gentleman, 
109 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

even with an elderly gentleman. To hear the mat- 
ter treated with flippancy was almost too much 
to bear. Yet what save flippancy could have 
prompted his next remark. 

“ Because they hadn’t anything else to wear, my 
love. And even if I should give you my breeches 
— which I have no intention of doing — how do I 
know the matter would end there ? In a month or 
two you’d burrow back to some more remote fore- 
father and try to make me swap my kilts for a 
string of cockle-shells. Reform yourself, my dear, 
as much as you will. Any change would be for 
the better. But, by Heaven, you must leave me 
my breeches!” 

And Betty, blushing an unbecoming brick colour, 
removed herself and her suggestion. It must be 
admitted that in the privacy of the old school-room, 
now the study, she wept. It must also be ad- 
mitted that her father guessed that she would and 
found the idea highly diverting. From which it 
will appear that Sir Richard’s sense of humour was 
of a robust kind. It was a little like the tigers he 
had travelled to Africa to kill and whose skins on 
the drawing-room floor proved so many snares to 
the unwarned and unexpecting. Its smile was so 
wide as to be nearly a snarl. It may be remarked 
that Sir Richard’s wife was devoted to the tiger 


no 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

skins. They represented the intervals of peace 
which had made her married life bearable. Re- 
nira, the youngest daughter of this happy union, 
scorned the tigers. “Twelve of you,’’ she would 
reproach them, “and only one of him! You might 
have seized upon your opportunity — and upon him. 
I’m ashamed of you!” Sir .Richard was one of 
those men of whom absence made his womenkind 
fonder. His final exit would have roused their ab- 
solute devotion. But he was very popular in the 
country and he had been known to stay up all 
night with a sick cow. He was in the habit of 
referring to that cow. The story of his nervous 
collapse when she was definitely out of danger had 
edified many a dinner-table. The climax ran: 

“An’ there was I, blubberin’ like a fool, I give 
you my word. An’ there was she, breathin’ sweet 
and steady with her head on an armful of hay. I 
never was so moved in my life.” 

It was often said that Sir Richard’s wife did not 
appreciate him. Her reception of this touching 
narrative gave colour to the rumour. But it was 
not generally understood that by some trick of the 
mind the story of the cow’s head on the armful of 
straw always suggested to her the picture of a 
child’s golden head on a pillow, her own head laid 
down beside it and her husband’s voice — in a tone 


III 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Utterly unlike that which he employed for the cow 
story — saying to her : 

“It’s all over, I tell you. That child is dead. 
Stop your blubbering. Aren’t three girls enough 
for any man to feed and clothe ? Now, if it had 
been a boy!” 

And after a long space, a mercifully long space, 
the voice again: 

“What did you call this one ? There is to be an 
entry or something on the parish books and I can’t 
remember the silly name you gave it. Stop that 
noise, I say.” 

It was as true, as it was frequently remarked, 
that Mrs. Banbridge’s opinion of her husband 
varied from that of those neighbours who knew 
him slightly. She too never forgave the desultory 
tigers. 


II2 


CHAPTER XIX 


R ENIRA and John easily persuaded Betty to 
. act as their chaperon. Indeed, Betty re- 
quired no persuasion. She seized upon any op- 
portunity of visiting Glendaire for she had under- 
taken to convert John’s secretary, young Jarvis 
Burke, to the Gaelic revival and propaganda. 
Suitable candidates for conversion were rare in 
that immediate neighbourhood, and young Jarvis 
promised well, though as yet she had made no 
attempts upon his costume. Also there were cer- 
tain old manuscript volumes in the Glendaire 
library relating to the days in which her imagina- 
tion loved most to linger. In the library, there- 
fore, she and young Burke whiled away the sunny 
afternoon hours, while John and Renira went about 
the grounds. 

Renira in her riding habit looked very sweet and 
boyish, and John’s heart stirred a little out of its 
accustomed beat as he imagined what life would 
be with Renira always there, and with no super- 
intelligent Betty to be propitiated and soothed with 
minds to conquer. John decided to let that enthu- 
siast try the housekeeper next and then the other 

113 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

servants. But the end would come some time. 
After the scullery maids: what? John wondered. 

Renira wandered from place to place, recog- 
nising old friends among the flower beds and being 
introduced to new ones; marvelling upon the 
growth of the clambering rose which spanned the 
arch between the formal Italian garden and the 
wild border land beyond, where the close-clipped 
hawthorn hedges became trees of wonderful bloom 
and where the flowers requiring little cultivation 
stood sturdily and laughed at those recently trans- 
planted from the hothouses. Renira was sitting 
on the edge of the fountain feeding the goldfish 
and wishing that the Monastery boasted some 
such attraction. 

“ But father wouldn’t hear of our having them,” 
she complained. “ He thinks everything but horses 
an extravagance.” 

‘‘I shouldn’t interfere with him on that subject 
if I were you,” said John — “not, at least, as long 
as he’d let me ride his horses.” 

“Oh, we get plenty of riding,” she admitted. 
“In the hunting season, you know, we get nearly 
too much; but I do wish he’d give us something to 
spend on the place and the house. He’s done abso- 
lutely nothing to it since his father died and we 
came in for it. And that was before you began at 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

this. Yet see how beautiful, how wonderful you 
have made these gardens and the house! Even I 
can remember it as being so different.” 

“ I have been getting it ready for you,” said John, 
taking his place beside her. ‘‘And T think it is 
nearly ready now.” 

Suddenly all her gaiety died and her eyes filled 
with tears. This air of false proprietorship always 
made her miserable. 

“Don’t, dear, don’t,” she pleaded. “You know 
we agreed never to speak of it.” 

“Never while it was hopeless,” he corrected. 
“But I’m beginning to see light ahead. Listen, 
darling. I’ve been perfectly well for nearly three 
years, and you know the doctors said that after 
three years it would be safe ” 

“Yes, yes, I know,” she interrupted, with a vivid 
blush, “but I’m wiser now than when you spoke 
of this before, and I’m afraid, dear, that it won’t 
do yet. What you said a moment ago about 
getting this place ready for me is very sweet and 
very lover-like and very kind ” 

“And literally true,” her lover assured her. “I 
hardly ever think of it except in relation to you — 
to the time when you’ll always be here with me.” 

“Yes, dear, yes. I know you look forward 
always to having us together, but think, John, 

115 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

think hard and answer truly; do you ever look for- 
ward to having me without the place ?” 

“Never!” he answered after a pause. “Never! 
I can’t imagine any other life for us but this — I 
won’t live any other life, and if Pat thinks that his 
five minutes’ advantage of me gives him the right 
to interfere with my life, he is very much mis- 
taken. Look here, Renira, you know I am fond 
of you, but I give you my word I’d shoot him like 
a dog if he ever tries to lord it over me and the 
place here.” 

“Dear John,” said Renira, “don’t talk so wildly, 
you know you wouldn’t injure Pat for all the gold 
in Golconda.” 

“I’m not talking about gold. It’s this place 
that I have made and loved and lived for. What 
did he ever do that it should be his I swear to 
you. I’ll never let him take it from me.” 

“I can’t bear to hear you talk this way,” cried 
poor Renira. “You know it’s not true.” 

“It’s quite true, I intend to let you see what 
sort of man I really am. When our marriage ” 

Renira stretched a little hand toward him and he 
held it in both of his as he went on. “When our 
marriage, sweetheart, seemed as far away as the 
clouds, it would have been a crime to tell you any- 
thing which might have destroyed your love for 

ii6 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

your worthless lover. The better you thought me 
then, the happier for you. But now that Pat seems 
likely to go on travelling about as he has all these 
years back, and to leave me in possession here; 
now that the enemy seems to be scotched at least 
(for three years is a long time, my darling), now 
I want you to think seriously all over again about 
marrying me, and you can’t do that unless I tell 
you what sort of a beast I am. You know that 
you and the place are the only things in the world 
I care for, because I have never forgiven my mother 
for the five minutes which made an earl of Pat and 
a hireling of me.” 

“Oh, my dear,” she remonstrated. “My dear, 
my dear!” 

“Yes, I know, I know it’s shocking, unfilial and 
all that sort of thing, but I’m telling you to-day the 
absolute truth about myself, and that’s a part of it. 
I hate my mother.” 

“I know,” she said, “I’ve always known, but 
it’s terrible to hear you say it.” 

“And when Pat was in South Africa and the 
lists of killed and wounded began to pour in I 
used to feel that I would give anything on earth to 
read his name among the dead.” 

Renira started up somewhat wildly. “No, no, 
John,” she cried, “you cannot mean what you are 
117 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

saying. For God’s sake, John, don’t say that you 
wanted Pat out of the way, you know he loves you 
and that he would never think of interfering here.” 

'‘It was all on your account,” said John, looking 
sombrely up at her. 

"Oh, don’t, John, hold me responsible,” she 
wailed — "don’t say it was all for me. You love 
the place more, John — ^you know you do.” 

"Love it,” he echoed. ‘‘Ay, more than any of 
you will ever know. You know that, Renira — ^you 
always have known it — and now you know the 
rest — that if you marry me you will have a hus- 
band consumed with covetousness, rusted with 
envy, perverted and bitter by an accident of five 
minutes.” 

"I will be married to the man I love,” Renira 
answered — "and that’s all I ask of life.” 


CHAPTER XX 


P RESENTLY they went back to the castle 
where John had made some alterations and 
improvements which he was anxious to submit 
to her judgment. Betty met them on the broad 
steps. 

‘‘The post has come,” she cried, “the American 
post — and there’s a thick letter from Pat for you, 
John. I know his writing. It’s on the hall table; 
do come in and read it. I am dying to hear the 
news.” 

Together they moved into the hall and John, 
after a perfunctory apology, tore the letter open 
and began to read. Renira and Betty interested 
themselves in some papers which the same post 
had brought. Upon Renira’s part the interest was 
quite assumed, for her mind was still full of her 
recent talk with John, full of gladness and fore- 
boding, pride and fear. Suddenly, a hideous 
noise and a heavy fall broke the pleasant silence. 
Jarvis, white-faced but determined, rushed out 
of the oak room and sprang to where John, hav- 
ing fallen from his chair, was writhing and fighting 
on the floor. Betty, with one horrified glance, 
1 19 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

dashed toward the stairs, fell over the front of her 
riding habit and lay there whining and sobbing. 
Renira’s impulse was to go to John’s assistance, 
but Jarvis waved her away. 

“Go to your sister,” he commanded. ^‘Or, no, 
go to the housekeeper and tell her to send Mr. 
Gresham’s man here at once. Go, I tell you,” 
he reiterated, standing always between her and the 
awful thing on the floor. 

The terrified Renira obeyed, and when Mrs. 
O’Leary had given the necessary orders, she tried 
to comfort the broken-hearted girl. Betty, hys- 
terical and bleeding from a slight cut on the cheek, 
was soon brought to them, and these three women 
waited together until the doctor came and went 
and the ordinary routine of the house was re- 
established. Betty, the least concerned in the 
catastrophe, was the most vehement in her emotion. 
The other two were very quiet and spoke in whis- 
pers together. 

“We thought, you know,” said Mrs. O’Leary, 
“we thought that he was quite recovered, poor 
dear gentleman. He hasn’t had an attack now 
for three years.” 

“I know,” answered Renira. 

“And he was beginning to feel so encouraged. 
He had never been free for so long before. Oh! 


120 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Miss Banbridge, dear, it’s a cruel disease! an 
awful disease! reaching out of the dark, so to 
speak, and touching you on the shoulder when 
you least expect it. Poor, dear gentleman. He 
has a bitter life, and if it has made him a little 
hard, who can blame him ? Not I, for one.” 

'‘Nor I,” murmured Renira, "he’s never hard 
to me.” 

"No, Miss Banbridge, dear, nor ever would be. 
But he’s sometimes hard with the men and with 
the tenants. He’s not as popular here as his lord- 
ship is, although his lordship never gives us a 
thought and Mr. Gresham lives for the prosperity 
of the place. A lonely man. Miss Banbridge, 
lonely, hard and bitter, and if there’s any way he 
can be saved, it ought to be done. You’re the 
one to do it.” 

"Yes, I know,” Renira answered. 

Only a short hour before life with John at 
Glendaire had seemed full of happiness and se- 
curity, ambition’s greatest lure, earth’s brightest 
promise. But in that intervening hour she had 
seen it as an awful prison house, a hideous anx- 
iety. She dreaded and yet craved it. 

"I’ll say no more, miss,” said Mrs. O’Leary. 
"But I’ve long wanted to say that much. Those 
that are interested in Mr. Gresham ought to give 


I2I 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

thought of the way he’s living here alone, too 
proud to admit he’s lonely, and they should do 
what they can to put an end to it.” 

The housekeeper went about her duties and 
Renira sat in the embrasure of the window and 
looked out over the place to which her lover had 
given so much of his thought and life. Beauti- 
ful and smiling it lay in the afternoon sunlight, 
sweet and peaceful and cheery the gardens looked; 
a noble avenue of beeches led away to the west, 
the mountains rose protectingly to the south-east, 
grim but kindly. There were plantations of young 
trees upon these mountains, sheep grazed upon 
them, grouse and pheasants were sheltered there, 
and one patch of natural woodland showed where 
the deer park lay. It was all John’s doing; the 
result of his intelligence. Yet, somewhere within 
the house he lay, the intelligence gone out of him; 
the youth and the manhood dead in him and all 
his strength perverted, distorted! She had heard 
of these attacks, had imagined them vaguely as 
periods of pain and exhaustion, but she had never 
guessed anything like the reality. The revelation 
which John had begun at the fountain had been 
more unreserved than he had intended, and Re- 
nira, who had looked undismayed upon his moral 
lapses, had shrunk with horror from the physical. 


122 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Wildly that day but more calmly during the 
weeks that followed, she realised that marriage 
with John Gresham was impossible. She reached 
this conclusion through many a night of tears and 
many a long conversation with her wise and gentle 
mother. 

Soon passed an hour or two, and presently 
Jarvis was with them again. 

“Yes, Mr. Gresham was better,’’ he reported, 
“a little weak, perhaps, but quite himself.” He 
wished Miss Banbridge to read his lordship’s 
letter. It would explain things to her. And 
might he trouble her to make the news public? 
He, Jarvis, had been told — he would inform the 
household; but for the outsiders Mr. Gresham 
begged that Miss Banbridge would act as herald. 
Mr. Gresham would not be able to see any one 
for some days. That was Jarvis’s message. And 
now might he suggest that Miss Banbridge would 
be the better for a little fresh air. Perhaps she 
would like to take the letter — she would see that 
it was rather long — out into the garden. He 
would arrange that she should be undisturbed 
there. 

So it was on the edge of the fountain where she 
and John had talked earlier in the day that Renira 
crouched and read: 


123 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

‘‘My dear John: 

“You must have been wondering what has be- 
come of me. It is nearly six weeks since I last 
wrote you. A long time, I suppose, it seems, to 
you, but a short enough time in which to fall in 
love and get married. That’s what I’ve been 
doing. There’s no good in telling you what a 
darling of a sister I’ve got for you. You wouldn’t 
believe it, you old misogynist. You know how I 
vowed after she, who shall be nameless, threw me 
over, that I’d never have anything to do with a 
girl again. Well, dear boy, that was all nonsense. 
She wasn’t a girl at all. She was a wax figure. 
My wife is a real living girl moved by her own true 
heart and the keenest set of brains, my boy, that 
you’d meet in a long day’s drive. To look at 
she’s a darling, to talk to she’s a wonder, to travel 
with, she’ll be beyond description. 

“For we’re going to travel. It is the one thing 
upon which her father, a charming man, by the 
way, insisted; he didn’t seem to care about settle- 
ments, said he had enough money to see the thing 
through if anything happened to mine, but he 
did make it a point that I should take Dot — by 
the way, her name was Dorothy Forbes — to see 
the world. She has not long finished school, and 
he and his wife had intended taking her round 
124 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

the world. She’s never left the little Connecticut 
town in which she was born. But when Dot and 
I came to an understanding, I persuaded Mr. 
Forbes to let me act as cicerone, told him I’d been 
about a good bit and knew the ropes, and on that 
condition he gave his consent to our marriage. 
We are to travel for two or three years before we 
settle down. His heart was set upon it. Dot’s 
heart was set on it. She has been reading up his- 
tories and travels ever since she left school in prep- 
aration for it, and you can guess how readily I fell 
in with the plan. We will let the tobacco go until 
I return. The plan is a good one. Elliott was 
right, and Dot is looking forward to establishing 
the industry at Glendaire. I forgot to mention 
that her father is, among other things, a planter, 
and that she is an expert on the subject. What 
larks we three shall have together! and Renira, 
too. She and Dot would get on like winking. 
Give her my love, and, believe me, 

“Your affectionate brother, Pat. 

“P. S . — Do you mind writing this news to the 
mater. I tell myself I haven’t time, but to be 
frank, I think I rather funk it.” 

Across the bottom of the page John had writ- 
ten with a pencil: “Sic transit gloria mundi.” 

125 


CHAPTER XXI 


T wice again the rhododendrons blossomed 
and faded; twice again spring followed 
winter before the return of the Earl and Count- 
ess of Glamoran, accompanied by a top-heavy 
young gentleman familiarly addressed as Pitty Pat 
but entered on the baptismal records of Edge- 
combe, Connecticut, as ‘‘Patrick Michael Forbes 
Gresham, son of Patrick Gresham, Earl of Gla- 
moran, Glendaire Castle, Ballycree, Ireland, and 
of Dorothy Forbes Gresham, of Edgecombe, 
Connecticut/’ In Burke’s “Peerage” he was set 
down as Viscount Glendaire. 

Even the most ponderous of the British papers 
devoted some space and some enthusiasm to the 
heralding of his arrival. The more frivolous peri- 
odicals furnished further details; the American 
press and magazines gushed forth a wealth of mis- 
information. In all of them there were references 
to his father’s prowess and popularity and the 
wealth and beauty of his mother; in some of them 
there were descriptions and portraits of his pa- 
rents and his rattle, and in one there was a series 
of views of the Glendaire estate. 


126 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Mrs. Forbes moved through this cloud of golden 
literature as one in a dream. She had vaguely 
looked forward to a title for her grandson just 
as she had known that he might some day wear 
long trousers and drive a motor. But it had not 
occurred to her that he should arrive upon the 
scene already titled Viscount Glendaire. That 
gave a sort of heavenly cachet to his state. 

‘‘ I don’t know as we ought to let him ciy like 
that,” she would remonstrate with some ada- 
mantine nurse; ‘‘you know he’s British aris- 
tocracy,” and his small lordship soon learned to 
connect pleasant breaches of discipline with the 
near presence of his grandmother. 

Of a friendly disposition was Viscount Glen- 
daire, when he was introduced to his inheritance, 
very wide of smile and proud of the occasional tooth 
which this smile exhibited. He was about three 
feet high, two feet in circumference and two years 
old. His disposition, according to his grand- 
mother, was angelic. His nose, according to his 
grandfather, was “Palmer, as sure as you’re born.” 
He was soft, yet solid to the touch, weighed an 
astonishing amount, and his only eccentricity was 
an aversion to nurses. In vain were candidates 
of all ages and nationalities submitted to him. 
Once in his eighteenth month — the party had 
127 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

then established itself in Florence — his American 
nurse had been called home by some domestic 
joy or sorrow of her own, and James, his father’s 
valet, had volunteered, temporarily, for her de- 
serted post. Ever since then the heir to all the 
Greshams had howled at the touch of a female 
hand at dressing time. During the rest of the 
day he endured feminine society, nay, he even 
waxed happy and heavy in it, but he would be 
taken up and put to bed by no one but his father’s 
valet. James was by long training accustomed 
to the intricacies of masculine apparel, but in the 
first days of this service the perspiration would 
stand thick upon his brow as he held Pitty Pat, 
very pink and contented after a bath, upon his 
knee and thus addressed him: 

“So those is your clothes, sir. Rather baggy 
and cool I’d call ’em. Could you take your mind 
off of that truly remarkable toe long enough to 
say which piece of it all you’d like to put on first ? 
No choice, haven’t you } Well, neither have I, 
so we’ll try the one that looks most like a shirt. 
If you’d be so good, m’ lord, as to ask her lady- 
ship, your mother, to put you into trousers. I’d 
feel more sure of giving satisfaction.” 

“Paddy Daddy,” would be his small lordship’s 
answer. It was two-thirds of his entire vocabulary. 

128 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Yes, sir. Til consult his lordship when Fve 
got you looking right. ’Ow would you like your 
^air, sir, military Parted at the side i Allow me 
to point out, sir, that your shoes is not meant for 
food. ’Ere, sir, ’old ’ard, sir, you was nearly off 
there, my lord.” 

“Jimmy,” remarked Pitty. It was the other 
third of his vocabulary and it melted James’s soul 
to unresisting putty. All his life he had been 
known as James. A certain austerity of feature 
quite belying his tender nature had combined 
with his profession to fix upon him the more 
formal version of his name. He had often tried 
to persuade shy housemaids and eligible ladies’ 
maids to use the derivative. But until he had suc- 
ceeded in teaching it to Pitty Pat he had still been 
James to all the world. It is no exaggeration to 
say that he would have cheerfully died for his little 
master, though he had no intention of doing so. 
It seemed more sensible and useful to stay alive 
and to serve him in such small ways as were pos- 
sible. Talking Pitty Pat to sleep was, perhaps, 
the service James most enjoyed. The dressing 
and undressing never lost their terrors of a baby 
dropped, a safety-pin swallowed, an arm or a leg 
nvisted altogether off by his well-meaning but 
clumsy hand. In all other capacities his hands 
129 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

were clever and deft enough, but the soft warmth 
of Pitty Pat and the little caresses with which he 
punctuated the progress of his robing and disrob- 
ing unnerved the unaccustomed James. He had 
not served many gentlemen who were in the habit 
of throwing short arms about his neck and plant- 
ing open-mouthed kisses upon his correct features. 

Singing Pitty Pat to sleep was one of her lady- 
ship’s most cherished privileges. Travelling, even 
as they did it, in leisurely fashion, had interfered 
so much with the academic rearing of the little 
chap that his unregenerate parents after months 
of compromise between theory and existing and 
ever-varying circumstances, decided to let theory 
go by the board and to enjoy the baby as they 
enjoyed everything else. They were conscientious 
on the subject of diet and sleep, but in all other 
ways they ignored the rules and helps set down 
for such as they. So Dot crooned the baby to 
sleep. Pat put him daily through a whole course 
of gymnastics, they kept him with them as much 
as possible, and, generally speaking, by the book, 
ruined the child’s future and foredoomed him to 
neurasthenia. 

Upon those evenings when duty or pleasure 
interfered with Dot’s carrying out her most deadly 
designs upon the habits of her offspring, it was 
130 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

James’s privilege to act as her understudy. The 
nurse was glad enough to resign the nursery to 
him. The constant society of Patrick Gresham 
1 6 th was a rather exhausting honour. 

‘‘Jimmy,” that scion of nobility would remark, 
looking out over the edge of the crib to greet his 
entertainer with his wide smile and preparing to 
be taken out of his prison and held in the angle 
of his friend’s strong arm. 

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir. But you’re not to 
get up, sir,” James would answer as he tucked 
his small master into the blankets and set his re- 
bellious head straight upon the pillow. “Yes, sir, 
it’s Jimmie. I took the liberty of droppin’ in to 
pass the time o’ day like. Now you lay still, sir, 
while I turns down the lights. So. And draws 
this chair close to your bedside. So. And now I 
can talk to you confidential and private. There’s 
a plenty to tell you, sir.” 

“Paddy Daddy,” was Pitty Pat’s stock reply, 
accompanied by an attempt to arise and go in 
search of that astute adviser. 

“Well, of course, sir,” James was forced to 
grant: “of course, as you say, his lordship is con- 
cerned in it. And her ladyship, too, if you go 
into that. But you’re the one that’s mostly the 
cause of these here changes and you’re the one 

131 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

rd rather talk to about ’em. Your not under- 
standing a word I say to you, sir, is the greatest 
kindness ever done me by a gentleman.” 

“Jimmy,” was the remark next in Pitty Pat’s 
repertoire. He made it. 

“No, sir, of course not as you say. I couldn’t 
talk to you so open if you was apt to get an ink- 
ling of my drift. But things bein’ as they are, sir, 
and his lordship speakin’ frequent of goin’ ’ome, 
it’s but right some one should warn you, sir. 
There’s no one else to p’int out these things but 
me. I knows your uncle. His lordship (though 
his twin brother as you know, of course, sir) don’t 
know no more about Mr. Gresham than you do. 
Not so much, sir, for I’ve opened your eyes on a 
point or two.” 

If James had done so they were certainly clos- 
ing again now under the spell of the lowered voice, 
the comforting hand upon the little shoulder. 
Pitty Pat seemed content to leave his protector to 
cope with the dangers he described. 

“You’ll read about wicked uncles in the story 
books when you gets old enough — or maybe I’ll 
tell ’em to you before that — but you’ll never read 
nor hear of a worse one than your own. No, not 
the Babes in the Wood nor the Princes in the 
Tower ever had a wickeder. 


132 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

’Ow do I know? you’ll ask. Don’t I tell 
you we lived there three months after we got back 
from Africa the last time, and off and on before we 
sailed for America. And don’t my friends the 
housekeeper and the head coachman and the 
gamekeeper — all sendin’ their lovin’ duties to 
you, sir, tell me ’ow his bin carryin’ on. ’Avin’ 
his fits when his lordship writes an’ says he’s mar- 
ried to her ladyship. An’ you know, sir, I told 
you ’ow ’e took on when we sent him a cable 
sayin’ you was ’ere and a boy ?” 

James looked about the pretty room, considered 
all the sweet accessories which Dot carried with 
her from place to place and with which she could 
make a home of the most unpromising hotel ac- 
commodation. All that he had ever vaguely felt 
unable to provide for his lordship’s perfect pleas- 
ure she had thought of, and lo, it was there. The 
lights burned low in the big room. Silver and gold 
gleamed on the dressing tables, familiar photo- 
graphs in heavy frames stood about, a golden robe 
lay across a chair. The air was sweet with some 
faint perfume which James had learned to asso- 
ciate with her ladyship. The child’s breathing 
was the only sound which broke the stillness, and 
James knew that a man, his master’s only brother, 
was going mad because these things were. 

133 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Only that morning he had heard again from 
his friend the housekeeper at Glendaire Castle. 

pray to God/’ she had written, “that you’ll be 
coming home soon. Mr. John is worse every day. 
He works from morning to night; never rests, 
never spares himself and never spares any of us. 
The place and the house are more wonderful than 
ever, but nothing satisfies him for long. It’s sel- 
dom enough he goes to see Miss Renira Banbridge 
now — him that used to be so fond of her. They 
tell me she is failin’ off greatly in her looks and 
colour, poor girl. But the queerest change in him 
is his meanness — paring the pennies he expects 
us all to be and saving everywhere. He’s cruel 
hard on the tenants, too. I’m told, and he leads 
that misfortunate young Mr. Jarvis Burke the life 
of a dog. 

“Life here at Glendaire since the late earl’s 
time has been sad and quiet enough, with no com- 
pany to speak of and his young lordship travelling 
about on the waves of the world. But ever since 
his young lordship married, things here have gone 
from bad to worse, with Mr. Gresham, I mean. 
He’s just the way he used to be when his poor 
mother used to be at her wit’s ends what to do 
with him when he was a boy. You’ll present my 
duty to his lordship and her ladyship, and to his 
134- 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

little lordship. So no more at present, from your 
attached Margaret O’Leary.’’ 

“So, you see, sir,” James went on, addressing 
his now sleeping charge. “You see that there is 
surprises waiting for you in your old home; and 
however much that bad uncle of yours may try to 
seem friendly, I want you never to forget that 
when he heard you was born he ordered a horse 
up from the stables and rode over the mountains 
like a mad creature, and when he came back the 
horse, a strong young hunter that Mr. McBride, 
the coachman, was training up for the Dublin 
show, dropped dead under him on the way up 
the avenue.” 

James sat at his post and watched the little 
sleeping face undl his mistress came to relieve 
him. He was sorely tempted to hand Mrs. 
O’Leary’s letter to her ladyship, but the training 
of years held. He had not been asked for his 
opinion and advice and until he was so asked he 
would be silent. He was somewhat comforted 
and encouraged in this course by the reflection 
that his master and mistress were excellently well 
equipped to take care of themselves. 


135 


CHAPTER XXII 


D uring the three years which followed her 
marriage Dot changed but little. She was 
just as genuine, just as universally interested and 
interesting as she had always been. And the 
world, true to her husband’s prophecy and aided 
by her husband’s efforts, had indeed been kind to 
her. They had spent the first year and a half in 
America, ranging by slow luxurious stages from 
moose hunting in Canada to crocodile shooting in 
the Florida bayous; from trout fishing in the rivers 
and lakes of Maine to hunting grizzlies in the 
Rockies. They had done a season of opera, art 
galleries, theatres and concerts in New York, and 
there Dot had met for the first time the American 
woman as she is known to literature. 

This was a person always and eminently well 
dressed. She spoke a dialect of slang half Eng- 
lish and half American. Her accent, too, was half 
and half and she prided herself rather noisily upon 
her complete disregard for all that Mrs. Forbes 
had taught Dorothy to venerate. Homes, hus- 
bands and babies were so many tribulations. 
They had to be endured but they were rarely 
136 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

spoken of. Dorothy found this type so amazing 
that she set about analysing it, and discovered 
that a vast amount of affectation was used in the 
composing of it. At heart her fashionable friends 
were very much like other women, and many a 
blase-looking hostess had whispered: “Wouldn’t 
you like to see the nursery The youngsters are 
adorable when they are asleep. Don’t tell the 
others. They’d only laugh at me. But when 
we’re at home I generally manage to get in once 
or twice during the evening.” 

And once Dorothy and her creeping hostess had 
come upon Pat and the boastful host in the dim 
talcum-scented land of innocency. 

“They’re great,” cried the host to the hostess, 
“out of sight and the image of you.” And the 
hostess so far forgot her dignity as to kiss him. 

Pat, experienced traveller as he was, found new 
pleasure in that pursuit when it was shared by 
so intelligent a companion and he revisited old 
haunts and sought out new ones with a fresh 
energy. Everywhere they were received almost 
with acclaim — the newspapers had arranged that 
— and when then the eighteen months were nearly 
over they returned to Edgecombe to await the 
arrival of the seventeenth Gresham in the direct 
line. 


137 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

The pride and delight with which the Forbeses 
greeted their grandson were beyond description. 
The entertainments given in his honour, the to- 
bacco fields planted in his name, the bank ac- 
counts opened, the dresses embroidered, the nurses 
warred with and discharged, the congratulations 
of the neighbours, the rise in that month’s salary 
for all the Forbes’ employees, and the consequent 
enthusiasm were, like the feelings of Mr. Petty, 
beyond words. That noble lover, in the new 
enjoyment of his partnership with Mr. Vinney, 
showed an unchanged elevation of character. He 
sent the baby a spoon and he treated Pat with 
unchanged friendliness. 

“I don’t know but it’s a good thing,” he told 
the jubilant husband and father, ‘‘that I didn’t 
marry Dot. I don’t mind telling you that I was 
thinking somewhat of marrying her when you first 
come around, but I wasn’t sure she was as earnest 
as the future Mrs. Petty has got to be. So I 
held back, and then — lucky enough — ^you come 
and took her off my hands.” 

Lord Gresham looked closely at him — the calm 
of his features was unbroken and serene. It was 
quite evident that he believed what he was saying. 
His self-love had performed this miracle to heal 
the scars of its beloved. 

138 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Perhaps you’re right/’ said Pat. “Perhaps 
you would be happier with some one else. You 
have that to consider.” 

“Of course,” Abraham agreed, “a feller has 
got to consider himself. Can’t marry the first 
girl that wants him. How does she seem to git 
along? Gittin’ over it yet?” 

“Just beginning,” Pat answered. 

“That’s good!” cried Abraham, with rare gen- 
erosity. “This travelling ought to have took her 
mind off it somewhat, don’t you think?” 

“Say!” he volunteered, with one of his charac- 
teristic transitions — “say! I took up the cornet 
like I told you I would. Maybe Dot would like 
to have me come round and play to her some 
night?” 

“Wouldn’t that rather upset her?” questioned 
Pat in timely inspiration. “Make her see the 
difference, I mean. You know I don’t play the 
cornet.” 

“Maybe you’re right,” Abraham answered 
sadly. “We don’t want to make it any worse for 
her than it’s got to be. I guess when she begins 
to get around. I’ll take a trip up to New York. 
There’s a hardware convention takes place there 
next month, and of course they’re counting quite 
a little on me. I guess I’d better run up to it.” 

139 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Do; there’s a good chap,” said Pat gratefully. 
“By all means go.” And when Abraham aban- 
doned the sorrowing hardware dealers and re- 
turned to Edgecombe, the Greshams had already 
left. 

By stages slower than ever, since their party — 
augmented by their son and his attendants — was 
an unwieldy one, they travelled about the map of 
Europe, very slowly, very pleasantly and very 
leisurely. In Florence they stayed so long that 
they found it desirable to take a house there and 
Dorothy enjoyed, or rather underwent, her first 
housekeeping experience. In this, as in the trav- 
elling, James was a tower of strength. He spoke 
no language but his own, but he met the thieving 
and designing Italian servants with an instinct for 
economy as inborn as their own, and his eye for 
the detection of financial leakage was as keen as 
it was untiring. Dot learned to speak Italian dur- 
ing the months they spent in Romola’s city. Pat 
knew it already and he and she and the delightful 
old Anglo-Italian who had joined their train in 
the capacity of tutor to Dot spent many a de- 
lightful hour in the churches and museums upon 
which Savonarola has forever cast the magic of 
his name. They travelled on to France and 
rested in Rheims for a lovely spring in honour, 
140 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Dot wrote to her father, of its jackdaw and its 
cathedral. They made endless sorties into the 
surrounding country. There Dot learned some- 
thing of the thriftiest housekeeping in the world. 
In her earnest ambition to fit herself for her new 
position as chatelaine of Glendaire Castle and ar- 
biter of the fates of Ballycreel, she took infinite 
pains to study housing, sanitation, health, diet and 
occupation. Lord Gresham laughed at her en- 
thusiasm. He was more accustomed to his re- 
sponsibilities and they sat lightly upon him. 
‘‘John’’ he explained, “can put you up to no end 
of dodges. I always ask him when I want to 
know anything.” 

“But while we’re here,” Dot pleaded, “do let’s 
learn what we can.” 

Wherever they went she learned something, 
but even Pat, her constant friend and fellow-stu- 
dent, could not have told when or where she ac- 
quired a dainty grace and reserve of manner, a 
slow precision of speech and a tender low-voiced 
intonation. Perhaps she never felt the lack of 
these essentials to her new position, perhaps her 
acquirement of them was the natural result of 
meeting the flower of continental society. Per- 
haps it had, Pat conjectured, something to do 
with the Palmer blood. 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

There were, however, some natural changes 
wrought in her young ladyship. Her dressing 
had always been exquisite: it was now a little more 
elaborate, that was all. Her wit and her sympa- 
thy had always been instant — they were now more 
carefully worded, that was all. Her intelligence 
had always been fine and high; it now ranged over 
wider, nobler fields, that was all. And when the 
years of their exile were over, Pat wrote with all 
sincerity and truth to John: 

‘H am bringing home the noblest, sweetest 
woman in the world to be your sister.” 


142 


CHAPTER XXIII 


T hey broke their journey in England so that 
Dot and Pitty Pat might be introduced to 
Pat’s mother, who frankly avowed that if they 
wanted to see her they would have to come to 
London to do it, as she had no intention of crossing 
the channel. She was not a good sailor and she 
had the courage of her fears. Yet no one could 
have seemed less timorous than she was when she 
motored to Charing Cross to meet her eldest son, 
her only daughter-in-law and her only grand- 
child. Indeed, she was cool-headed enough in 
the midst of alarms to ask Pat the hotel at which 
he intended to stay, and Pat, who knew his mother 
and delighted in her whims, named one as far as 
possible from their then situation and from her 
flat. 

“Nonsense,” pronounced the old lady. “You’ll 
go to the Cecil or you’ll come to me; and in 
either case you’ll come to me first to have lunch, 
and you can walk round and see about the rooms 
afterward.” 

But by the time lunch was over, there was no 
question of seeking rooms. Mrs. Fortescue was 

143 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

delighted with Dot. Mr. Fortescue had always 
been fond of his stepson and now Pitty Pat was 
forging chains about him. So Pat went out on 
no more difficult a project than to look up a few 
chaps at the club and Dorothy was left alone with 
Mrs. Fortescue. 

Of this formidable new relative Dot only knew 
that she had begun life upon the stage, that she 
was one of the very first actresses to migrate into 
nobility, and that Ireland and country life had 
so bored her that she, as soon as propriety would 
allow, permitted Mr. Fortescue to fill the blank 
left in her existence by the death of the old earl. 
She had promptly repaired to town to spend a 
happy and busy life and a large income among 
dressmakers, gossip, the theatres and a fleet of 
motors. Hence the flat. She had no time to 
take care of a house, and Glendaire Castle had 
left her no desire to have one. 

Mrs. Fortescue on the contrary was amply in- 
formed as to her daughter-in-law. That dutiful 
son and brother John Gresham had obeyed Pat’s 
behest. He had “broken the news to mother” 
in such wise that he had nearly achieved the happy 
result of breaking mother too. Some “American 
Vulgarian,” he wrote, “had married Pat. He 
was mad enough to marry her, but not quite mad 
144 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

enough to bring her home. He writes that it will 
take three years to civilize her. He always liked 
the society of savages. He’ll get enough of it 
now.” 

To this filial effusion Mrs. Fortescue had re- 
plied, ‘‘You always were an unconscionable liar. 
Send me Pat’s letter and believe me to be, your 
affectionate mother.” 

Since this first interchange of confidences John 
had sent his mother further extracts from Pat’s 
correspondence dealing with the steps being taken 
to polish ‘‘The Vulgarian.” “She’ll never be fit 
to bring home,” he happily prophesied and, believ- 
ing his prophecy, found peace. 

These things were in Mrs. Fortescue’s keen old 
mind when she prepared to welcome her “daugh- 
ter.” From the first Dot’s travelling accessories 
earned the approbation of her fastidious taste, 
and her sharp old eyes caught every sign of the 
affection and comradeship tinctured with scrupu- 
lous etiquette which characterised her son’s man- 
ner to his wife. 

“That’s right, my dear,” she encouraged Dot as 
soon as she found herself alone with that young 
matron. “Keep him in order — they all want it, 
and I can see you’ve trained him well.” 

Dot of course protested against this, but 

145 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

'‘Tut, tut,’’ Mrs. Fortescue cried; "don’t tell me. 
Wasn’t I married to his father, and don’t I know 
what those Greshams can be like unless they are 
held well in hand. I made the mistake of being 
the patient Griselda with the earl, but I knew 
better with Mr. Fortescue. Look at him for a 
husband!” This last invitation was of course 
figurative, Mr. Fortescue having been despatched 
in search of cucumbers of especial desirability for 
sandwiches at tea-time. Dot agreed that he was 
indeed a model. Mrs. Fortescue accepted this as a 
tribute to her powers as a disciplinarian and went 
on: "It’s all a question of time. Begin at the 
right time and you’re all right. Put it off and you 
never can do it. Never let them feel that you 
care one jot what they like or want or wish, give 
them what is good for them, feed them well, insist 
upon every possible attention from them, never 
go out without them, yet never stay at home be- 
cause they don’t want to go out. This is the ad- 
vice that I always give to brides; it carries weight 
because I can point to my husband and say, as I 
do to you: 'Look at Mr. Fortescue.’ ” 

" I will,” Dot promised, and later, when she did, 
he several times, at important points of his wife’s 
discourse, rewarded her scrutiny with a long and 
patient wink. But this was later. Now, how- 
146 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

ever, in the quiet of the early afternoon, Mrs. For- 
tescue turned from the glories of the future to the 
trials of the past. ‘‘The Greshams,” she assured 
her visitor, “were a bad lot — always had been.” 
They had broken the hearts of all the women 
who cared for them, and if Dorothy wanted con- 
firmation of this she could just study the picture 
gallery at Glendaire. “My dear, they’ll make you 
weep,” said she. “Pick out one that looks happy 
and you’ll find she was painted before she was 
married. There’s a young beauty there. Lady 
Margaret Ecclestone she used to be. Reynolds 
painted her three months after her wedding, and 
her face is the saddest thing that I ever saw. 

“Now, Pat,” she went on to explain, “is not a 
Gresham, he’s a Moriarty through and through. 
Just like my people. The Greshams always stay 
down in that pokey place of theirs and let the 
melancholy and misery soak into them. You’ll 
see a true Gresham when you see my son John 
— the most insufferable man, my dear, that I’ve 
ever met. Pat is fond of him. Pat’s a fool, but 
you’re no fool, my dear, and so I am telling you 
to keep an eye on your promising brother-in- 
law. He has honored me with his hatred, he 
makes no secret of it, as I make none of my com- 
plete reciprocity of sentiment. You American 
147 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

people go in for a lot of family affection — honour 
their forebears, and that sort of thing, due, I think, 
principally to the fact that you don’t know any- 
thing about them. It’s unpleasant to be forced 
to realise that your husband and your children are 
descended from blackguards, and when you’ve 
studied some of the annals of the Glendaire li- 
brary you’ll be brought to that realisation, my 
dear, and then perhaps you will be glad to remem- 
ber what I tell you now. There’s not an ounce of 
Gresham about Pat. So, of course, there can’t 
be even half an ounce in that fine little chap of 
yours.” 

‘‘He’s exactly like his father.” 

“Thank God he’s not like his uncle,” Mrs. 
Fortescue admonished her; “that is, of course, if 
you believe in God. I hear it’s no longer fashion- 
able. However, read the Glendaire annals, and 
you’ll believe in the devil, which is even less fash- 
ionable. And if the annals don’t convince you, 
just devote a little time to the study of my son 
John. Now get that boy of yours and we’ll go 
for a turn in the park.” 

And two days later when Dorothy set out for 
Ireland, Mrs. Fortescue warned her again — “Keep 
your eye on that other son of mine; Pat’s a fool, 
but John’s a devil. Good-bye, my love; I wish you 
148 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

every happiness in your beautiful home. You’ll 
know where to come if you ever want me.” 

“Oh, rot, mother,” cried her dutiful son, who 
heard only the last part of this valedictory. “Of 
course I know where to come; I’ve been coming 
any time this last fifteen years.” 

“I was talking to Dot,” said Mrs. Fortescue. 


149 


CHAPTER XXIV 


T he travellers were in a condition of intense 
excitement when at last the train stopped 
at their station and they found themselves the 
centre of a vociferous, if not over-clean, crowd. 
Haggard men in threadbare coats and hats of 
every vintage greeted them with hoarse cries of 
“Welcome to your ladyship; long life to your little 
lordship; welcome home, my lord. Glory be to 
God, but he’s yerself and Mister John over again. 
Ay, but he has his mother’s eyes on him,” main- 
tained one old man more observant or more dar- 
ing than the rest. “He has his mother’s beauti- 
ful dark eyes, the saints give him long use of them.” 

Dot turned to this last old man and smiled her 
all-conquering smile. It galvanised him into co- 
herent speech. “The coach is up beyond the 
turn, your ladyship, ma’am,” he wheezed. “They 
was in dhread one of the horses wouldn’t like the 
train. And how would he like it, bad cess to it, 
roaring and pawing like Jonah’s whale. ’Twill 
be here this instant minit, though. The master’s 
driving himself.” 

ISO 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

These predictions were soon fulfilled. A com- 
motion, made of a jingle and a jangle, the beat of 
hoofs, the rattle of chains and the ‘‘Whoa there, 
steady there” of the driver’s voice, soon resolved 
itself into “the master” driving himself and a 
very beautiful brown four. A groom appeared at 
the leaders’ heads, another sprang into being 
beside the wheelers, the crowd fell to technical 
criticism of the horses and Pitty Pat howled with 
glee. The master alighted and proved to be so 
exact a replica of Pat in every outward sign that 
Dot required all the evidence of bright sunshine, 
Pitty Pat jumping at her side, James busying him- 
self about the luggage and Pat beaming upon her 
to persuade her that she was not suffering from 
some multiplication of vision. Never had she 
seen such identity of appearance. But she had 
not long to marvel, for John was before her, hat 
in hand, with a pretty speech of welcome to which 
she responded as prettily. He helped her to her 
seat upon the box and then turned and lifted 
Pitty Pat, the ridiculous cause of all his miserable 
days and sleepless nights! A handful of soft flesh 
with a spark of life in it. A little chap in a white 
jersey, white flannel trousers about six inches 
long (for James had carried his point) and a 
white knitted cap. The little chap finding him- 

151 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

self in a stranger’s hands turned to survey that 
stranger. 

“It’s your uncle John, old fellow,” his father 
informed him. “ Buck up now, and do the polite.” 

Pitty Pat drew himself backward in his uncle’s 
embrace, looked at him eye to eye for a moment 
and then struck him in the face, full and fair, with 
all the energy of his little arm. 

“Jimmie” was all he said, and perhaps the 
warnings of that counsellor had something to do 
with that extremely awkward introduction. Every 
one apologised, every one explained. The nurse 
wept with mortification, and Pitty Pat was hustled 
unceremoniously up to his mother. The men 
took their places, the grooms sprang aside, the 
beggars raised a faint cheer and the four browns 
set out at a swinging trot upon the six-mile drive 
to Glendaire Castle. For the first mile Pitty Pat 
devoted his efforts to sitting as far as possible 
from his uncle and to achieving hair-breadth es- 
capes from falling off. He then turned his at- 
tention to the horn and the smiling man who 
sounded it. The man looked kind when Pitty 
Pat viewed him over his mother’s shoulder. Also 
James was at the back of the coach. It was a 
pleasant place. He would go and sit with James. 
He did. And when the confusion, caused by his 
152 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

transfer, had subsided and he was standing upon 
the thigh of his valet, that delighted retainer ex- 
claimed: 

“You done just right, my lord. We was all 
watchin’. As clean a knock-out as ever I see! 
An’ the first blood, too, sir. That counts a lot. 
You showed a very proper spirit, sir. An’ now 
O’Shaunessey — that’s O’Shaunessey with the horn, 
sir,” and the delighted performer ducked his head 
and touched his hat — “shall play you something 
suitable upon his instrument. ’Old ’ard, sir, for 
a minute and let ’em look at your legs. Clean as 
velvet,” he pointed out to his colleague, “and that 
strong in the ’ocks it would amaze you.” 

“Jimmie,” remarked his youthful lordship, 
“Jimmie,” and kissed him over the eyebrow. 
His mouth was very wide open. He was happy. 
He liked the music O’Shaunessey played. He 
liked masculine society and bright liveries. He 
liked to crouch against James when low-growing 
branches — all flower-laden and sweet — patted him 
on the back and dropped blossoms down his neck. 
Yet even these delights did not hold him long and 
he was standing beside his big father held in place 
by that father’s strong arm, when the brakes were 
set, the horses reined back, O’Shaunessey sounded 
his horn with deafening effect and the coach 

153 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

dropped down a sharp hill and turned into the 
single street of the little village of Ballycreel. 
There were flowers everywhere. Great branches 
of them nailed to the door posts or projecting from 
the tiny upper windows of the few luxurious 
houses which had an upper floor. Some of the 
more exuberant decorators had thrown flowers 
upon their roofs, where the frowsy thatch held 
them in place. A few flags added a note of more 
vivid colour, but indeed the blue petticoats of 
the women and the scarlet dresses of the little 
children were vivid enough. Pat leaned forward 
and put a hand on Dot’s shoulder — “The village 
of Ballycreel,” he announced. “Your people, 
sweetheart,” and neither he nor his wife found 
time to look at John. Which was a pity. 

Enthusiasm may have been perfunctory at the 
beginning, but when the Ballycreelers actually 
saw before them, or rather above them, their own 
young gallant captain with his jolly friendly smile, 
so unlike the master’s lowering expression, they 
cheered with more sincerity. When they saw her 
new ladyship, so young and friendly looking, so 
beautifully dressed, so delighted with her welcome, 
they cheered vociferously. But when they saw 
Pitty Pat standing so straight in his little white 
clothes, his black eyes full of puzzlement and of 
154 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

laughter and his cap held in his fat little fist, then 
Ballycreel lost its head completely and would 
have taken the horses away — would have dragged 
the coach up to the castle with their own loyal 
strength — had not ‘^the master’’ been sitting on the 
box. And presently when the last little cottage 
was left behind and the coach was mounting an- 
other hill almost as steep as that just descended, 
Ballycreel expressed itself more articulately. 

“Thanks be to God, they’re back,” O’Shaunes- 
sey’s mother remarked to her neighbour, Mrs. 
O’Driscoll, “and by the looks of them ther’s a 
good time coming for the village. God send they’ll 
get rid entirely of Mr. John. ’Tis the divil’s own 
life we’ve had with him this great while back.” 

“The saints grant it, woman dear,” Mrs. 
O’Driscoll answered. “Her ladyship had a kind 
face for all her hat was so feathery. There’ll 
be some hope now for the sick and the sorry in 
the place. You might as well go to the stones in 
the road as to Mr. John. He’s greatly altered 
this last few years.” 

From which it will be seen that the blight of 
Pitty Pat had spread from the castle on the hill to 
the hovels in the valley. 


155 


CHAPTER XXV. 



NOTHER group of vociferous well-wishers 


1 \. was gathered at the big gate and here a ban- 
ner, upside down it seemed to the new-comers, 
waved them welcome. 

“Who put it up asked Pat, “and what’s that 
word on it?” 

“Betty Banbridge sent it,” John replied. “It’s 
something Gaelic and appropriate to the joyful 
occasion. She is looking forward,” he added, turn- 
ing to Dot, “to making a thorough Gael of you.” 

“That would be only fair,” remarked Lord 
Gresham. “America owes us a Gael or two. 
Of all the rabid Americans under the stars and 
stripes the most rabid began as Irishmen. Now, 
darling, watch ! These are the beeches I told you 
of. Grand old chaps, aren’t they ? The place is 
looking magnificient, John,” he added. “Those 
clumps of laurel and evergreen are new. Stun- 
ning, aren’t they, dearest, against the gray beech 
trunks.” 

“Stunning,” Dot agreed rapturously. 

“So good of you to say so,” John said. The 
little sentence sounded simple and sincere enough. 


156 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

He was bearing the position rather well. He 
directed his sister-in-law’s attention to points of 
interest and told her the legends associated with 
them quite as though he were, as she imagined 
him to be, glad of the society of his kind after 
his too long solitude. She remembered how Pat 
had told her that this brother of his always as- 
sumed the position of host and she saw that what 
her husband had said was quite simply true. 
It was impossible to resist the feeling that they 
were indeed guests of an hour or of a month. 
John and Glendaire had managed excellently well 
before their coming and would so manage long 
after they should have gone away. 

'‘But we’re not going,” Dot reflected happily, 
and aloud she said, “I have a very wise daddy, 
Pat. If I had seen this heavenly place when we 
were first married, I should never have gone off 
to the end of the earth to have my mind improved. 
I suppose he guessed that.” 

“Truly, I suppose he did,” Pat answered. 
“Now we’re coming to the house, James, give 
Lord Pitty to me. Now, sir, look upon the home 
of your ancestors.” 

“And thrill,” Dot admonished her son. “This 
is a very psychologic moment for you and me, my 
dear.” 


157 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Whether Pitty Pat thrilled or not it would be dif- 
ficult to say. He certainly looked eagerly enough 
at the great, many-windowed, many-towered cas- 
tle which rose among the trees. By some heart- 
breaking whim of feminine coquetry it looked, 
John thought, more beautiful than he had ever 
known it, on this day of days when he must re- 
sign it. 

To Dot it was a piece of fairy-land. She had 
many photographs of it from all angles and as- 
pects. 

Pat had described it all over and over again, 
and yet she was quite unprepared for its wonderful 
beauty, for the dignity and quiet of its proportion, 
for the marvellous colours which the years had 
given to its austere granite walls. 

She knew what room lay behind each window; 
where the wide stair paused under stained glass, 
where the great hall ran from east to west and so 
caught the first sunlight in the morning and held 
the last twilight of the evening. 

A great sweep of gravel lay between the house 
and the gardens. From it the terraces sloped 
steeply down to the lily-padded lake which, in 
that direction, bounded the garden. The hardly 
less beautiful woodland, beginning at the pond’s 
far margin, led up, ever up, broken sometimes by 
158 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

patches of walled pasture and farm land, to a 
towering purple mountain. Other mountains rose 
all about, purple, blue or orange, as the sun shone 
on them or as clouds trailed across them. OIF to 
the north a black cloud showered slanting rain 
into the gray-green sea and brown-sailed fisher 
boats raced for the shore. 

‘‘In all our travels, Dot,’’ Lord Gresham re- 
marked, with entire conviction, “we never saw 
anything like it. Now, did we.?” 

“We did not,” replied his dutiful wife. 

“I hope you will be happy here,” John cour- 
teously broke in. His manner was all that a 
solicitous host’s should be, and it conveyed no hint 
of his almost overpowering desire to drive straight 
down the wide steps which led so gently to the 
smiling pond and to plunge the whole coach load 
into its unruffled depths. 

“ Dear old chap ! ” said Pat. “ It is good to be at 
home again. Ah! there’s Mrs. O’Leary on the 
steps! There, Dot, with the black dress and the 
widow’s cap. And there they all are!” he went on 
as the sound of wheels brought other figures — in 
livery and out of it — to support the dignified house- 
keeper. They seemed an overwhelming house 
staff to their new young mistress unaccustomed 
as yet to the nature and habits of the Irish servant 

159 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

and the enthusiasm with which he will perform the 
minimum of work in a maximum of time. The 
maids, the butler and the housekeeper stood upon 
the steps. Grooms, footmen and under-gardeners 
swarmed upon the avenue. A few of the more 
important tenants came out through a long French 
window with young Jarvis Burke and the two vil- 
lage clergymen. Father Sheehan and the Reverend 
Summers walked together in a unity which always 
amazed their much more militant parishoners. 
Every one was excited, almost hysterical, and here 
as in the village it was Pitty Pat — absolutely un- 
conscious of his importance in a scene which he 
nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed — ^who aroused the 
most enthusiasm. When Lord Gresham, wisely 
keeping his heir in his own custody and not risk- 
ing another scene, stood on the steps with Pitty 
Pat on his shoulder and thanked his people in 
a few hearty words for their welcome, Mrs. 
O’Leary and the maids shed tears and Dot the 
democratic was instantaneously converted to the 
oligarchical system of society. Her husband and 
her child were the rulers of this fair land: these 
affectionate people. She stood beside them de- 
lighted, transported and heard loving words of 
welcome in a strange soft accent which made the 
words more sweet. John, perforce, stood near 
i6o 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

her, and while Pat was talking she, looking from 
face to face before her, saw upon one — the face 
of an old woman — such a blaze of malignity, mur- 
derous malignity, as made her shiver even in the 
midst of warm sunshine and joy. The eyes were 
fixed not upon her but upon John. He seemed, 
however, quite indifferent to all about him. His 
moody face was turned to the north. His moody 
eyes saw nothing but the storm and the falling 
rain. 

Presently the crowd, having been drilled into 
some order of cheering by Father Sheehan and by 
him then led into exhausted silence, faded away: 
the servants retired to neglect their duties, the 
important tenants had withdrawn after being 
introduced to Dot — sometimes indeed to their 
wandering over-lord — and peace settled over the 
scene. 

Pat took Dot on a tour of inspection. Pitty Pat 
held a court of maids up in the nurseries with Mrs. 
O’Leary as chamberlain; John locked himself into 
the oak room; James, after a visit to the herb gar- 
den, taught his colleagues to celebrate the occa- 
sion in mint juleps; and Jarvis Burke stood at his 
window and watched for such glimpses as were 
vouchsafed him of the sauntering earl and countess. 
His heart was full of thankfulness. For he knew 

i6i 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

as no one else did how urgent had been the neces- 
sity for their return. 

And she was so lovely. Such beauty! Such 
youth! Such a winning lovely way with her! 
How he had dreaded the woman he had built up 
from his own reading and from John Gresham’s 
predictions — ‘‘The Vulgarian.” 

“I know you,” had been her greeting. “You 
are Jarvis Burke. I’ve learned to know your writ- 
ing as well as I do my own. And isn’t this all 
lovely: the day and the people.? I know you 
managed the people,” she flashed in one of her 
swift intuitions, “and I’m so glad you did.” 

Jarvis, who had slaved like a stage manager 
to wring enthusiastic demonstrations out of an 
apathetic tenantry, who had in some cases de- 
scended to bribery in his efforts to undo John’s 
paralysing influence, had utterly disclaimed this 
sweet reward. 

“But I know, I know,” she insisted. “Did 
you ever read ‘Lord Fauntleroy’ when you were 
little? Do they ever have it over here? I’m 
thinking that my little boy is like Cedric.” 

“And I’m thinking,” Jarvis answered, with 
more temerity than he would have dreamed possi- 
ble — “I’m thinking that you’re very like ‘Dear- 


162 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Bravo, Jarvis,’’ cried Pat in high delight. 
His travels had made him accustomed to the in- 
stant havoc wrought by his wife. She had grown 
up in an atmosphere of adulation and apparently 
no amount of it could spoil her. Her pretty grace 
of manner was never misleading and never mis- 
understood. She accepted admiration as she ac- 
cepted the sunlight: glad when it was shining and 
contented when it was not. 

So Jarvis sang psalms in his soul — ^he had gone 
in physical fear for many months 

John sat in his room and gave himself up to all 
the demons of hatred, fear, despair and envy. 
And Pitty Pat, escaping from a maid who was cul- 
tivating the attentions of a groom, fell into the 
fountain among the goldfish which poor Renira 
Banbridge had coveted, and was rescued — the 
water was about twelve inches deep — by the wide- 
mouthed Pluto, already the child’s self-appointed 
guardian. John saw them toiling up the steps 
together in very wet disgrace. 

“Even my dog,” said he. 


163 


CHAPTER XXVI 


P AT so vigorously championed his brother, and 
so bitterly denounced what he considered his 
mother’s treachery to John, that Dot was quite 
prepared to look smilingly upon this new relative. 
She found everything at Glendaire Castle so excel- 
lently ordered, the upper servants so well trained, 
and the horde of assistants drilled into such silence 
and self-abasement, that she experienced none of 
the unpleasantness she had anticipated in assum- 
ing control there. John’s taste, ability and econ- 
omy were everywhere apparent, and the Count- 
ess of Glamoran being her father’s child, rejoiced 
in the atmosphere of thrift and neatness. And 
how could she suspect or believe anything but 
good of a man who was, even in her eyes, con- 
fusingly like Pat! Constantly she mistook them 
for one another, to Pat’s great amusement. But 
by some undulled intuition, Pitty Pat never wa- 
vered in identifying his father. Pat never wearied 
in setting traps for his son and never once was 
Pitty Pat caught. He would never allow him- 
self to be lured into intimacy with his uncle. He 
never repeated the faux pas of his introduction 
164 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

to him. But the spirit of it remained through all 
their intercourse. 

“Pitty Pat no likin’,” he would consistently re- 
mark in his now rapidly enlarging vocabulary. 

If Pitty Pat had been gifted with the power of 
reading his uncle’s mind, he would have found 
in that dark chaos ample cause for enmity. For, 
definite and strong where so much was blurred and 
ill-formed, John harboured a determination to be 
rid of Pitty Pat. If the mother could be involved 
so much the better, but the boy, the heir, must 
be removed. 

Upon the whole the household saw but little of 
John. He rode about the country during the day, 
and in the evenings shut himself up in the oak 
room and discouraged, always courteously, inter- 
ruptions or invitations to join the family circle. 
Pat accepted this aloofness as a proof of John’s 
sensibility. '‘He sees we’re honeymooning still,” 
he told his wife, “and he thinks, dear old chap, 
that he’d be in the way.” 

And so he would. There was no room for any 
third person in the uninetrrupted conversations 
and silences, as they sat upon the terrace and 
watched the slow darkness closing down upon Glen- 
daire, saw the little lights flash out in the village 
below them, heard the birds settling to rest in all 
165 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

the trees and, from the grove across the lake, the 
full sweet song of the nightingale. They sat there 
evening after evening, often silent, but always hand 
in hand; and Dorothy found at first none of the 
melancholy of which Mrs. Fortescue had com- 
plained. For her the world held nothing but 
peace, ineffable peace. She had her man and her 
boy, a home beyond compare, and as the days 
went on she hoped to gain the love and devotion 
of the countryside. Life seemed buried in rest. 
Yet Dorothy knew that this could not be all of 
life. There was no struggle, no effort and, but 
this reflection she tried to stifle, no growth. 

Day followed day unchangingly except for the 
weather and even that seemed monotonously 
changeable. Some showers, some sunshine; some 
nights of heavenly clearness and some of a tangi- 
ble darkness, a soft thick palpable darkness when 
space seemed to spread no farther than arm’s 
length. 

For some weeks the young alien occupied her- 
self in adjustment. There was much of it to be 
done before she could live the life she had chosen, 
and her clever eyes soon showed her that all the 
yielding, all the adapting, would fall to her. The 
Greshams were as Greshams had been any time 
these five hundred years. Pat in the democratic 
1 66 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

atmosphere of Connecticut had flared for a mo- 
ment into democracy and altruism. But once 
on his native ground he had returned to his type. 
His social principles and precepts were identical 
with John’s. Only the leaven of the Moriarty 
good-humour kept him sweet. Dorothy often 
strayed into the long gallery and wondered whether 
she would pass as all her predecessors had, and 
leave no trace, no proof, of all the high and en- 
lightened thought which she yearned to spend 
upon Glendaire and the village of Ballycreel. Yet 
Pat was loving, always gentle, generous and easy- 
going. He seemed at first quite happy that she 
should act the Lady Bountiful, the goddess in 
the machine. He never tired of telling her how 
admirably she filled the eye; how exquisitely she 
suited the stately background. So far she was 
perfect, cherished and applauded. It was only 
when she advocated organised reforms or innova- 
tions that he grew restive, and the capable, large- 
hearted, ambitious Dorothy was forced into the 
position of guest in her husband’s home. Only 
the care of Pitty Pat was left to her. Without 
him she would have been desolately idle, but the 
upbringing of an adventuresome boy of three is 
almost a career in itself. 

Both Pat and John were forever assuring her 
167 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

that she did not — could not expect to — understand 
the Irish people. Dorothy grew weary and re- 
sentful of their parrot cry but always something 
occurred to show her how true it was. The 
shifts and evasions of the poor, the religious hos- 
tility which animated them, their patience, forti- 
tude, even their existence, in the conditions which 
obtained at Ballycreel and the surrounding glen, 
were absolutely incomprehensible to her. 

The attitude of the people of the better class she 
found equally amazing. Everywhere indifference. 
Placid, unemotional ignoring of all the standards 
which she held sacred. As well advocate canni- 
balism at the tea-tables of well-bred Wicklow as 
that starting-point of all her principles — ‘‘All men 
are born free and equal with an inalienable right 
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Sometimes she wondered whether she quite 
understood even her own husband. Why had he 
worked so strenuously at learning all that could be 
learned about tobacco, and why did he make no 
effort to put his learning to some use ? Was it the 
natural reaction after his travels ? Was he only 
resting ? Preparing ? — Or was it the fatal, rotting 
procrastination and laziness which, to her quick 
nature, seemed at the root of the whole nation’s 
decay ? 


i68 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

She was very young and very much alone. She 
lived in an atmosphere of age-old custom and 
association of which she knew, at first, nearly 
nothing. As she grew more familiar with it, as 
she caught tags and glimpses of the beginnings 
and the meanings of things, which now went on 
as though they never had had either, she began to 
wonder, only to wonder. She had no standards by 
which these things could be tested. In her own 
country a man’s choice generally shaped at least 
the name, the nature of his career. Here she saw 
the working of predestination in its earthly sense 
— saw and shuddered. 

On the day of her arrival she had demanded 
an introduction to the prophetic yew. She had 
laughed at it gaily enough then; laughed at the 
great iron bands which had been riveted upon its 
ancient but yet sturdy limbs by superstitious 
Greshams; laughed at the care it showed, the 
wide lawn upon which it stood alone near one 
corner of the house. 

On that first evening, too, she had been de- 
lighted, when she had asked John whose was the 
empty place beside her, to be told: 

“For the possible stranger for whom the hospi- 
tality of Glendaire Castle is always waiting.” 

Pat and Jarvis Burke and she had made merry 
169 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

about the custom then. She had sketched likely 
and unlikely claimants of their hospitality. But 
since that first day the spell of Ireland had fallen 
upon her. She had found that the windows of 
her golden room looked out on the sombre yew 
tree and that she could sometimes hear the whis- 
pering of its branches through the darkness. 
Morning always brought her to the window to see 
how her prophet had borne the night. And once 
when a storm had wrecked it she had sat miserable 
at her window, telling herself what an utter fool 
she was to think that the life or death of an old 
vegetable could have any bearing upon the fate of 
a dark-eyed little boy born in Edgecombe, Con- 
necticut. Pat found her crying and shivering. 
He held her in his arms and laughed at her and 
petted her and congratulated her upon her Irish 
temperament, but she never more treated the yew 
with levity and she developed a creepy conviction, 
most unsuited to the festive board, that when un- 
happiness came to Glendaire Castle it would enter 
by the open door and sit in the empty place. She 
tried to laugh at this variant of the legend but she 
did not quite succeed, and the end of the dinner 
hour was always welcome to her. 


170 


CHAPTER XXVII 


J OHN was too clever a man to allow this grow- 
ing unrest of Dorothy's to pass unheeded. 
He fully appreciated her power to make things 
even more difficult than they were. So far he had 
been able to keep Pat quiescent and to counteract 
Dorothy’s restlessness, but, knowing that in the 
ultimate analysis love was stronger than gratitude, 
he sensibly set himself to allay her new young 
ladyship’s suspicions. It was not entirely to se- 
cure her peace of mind that he introduced her to 
the more prosperous and loyal of the tenantry. 
The one great object of his life was also involved. 
If he could persuade her and, through her, Pat 
that affairs at Glendaire and Ballycreel were pros- 
perous and satisfactory it might be possible after 
another month or two to induce them to go light- 
heartedly forth upon some further travelling. 

So the tenantry grew accustomed to seeing her 
new little young ladyship riding about with the 
master and shrewdly they guessed that he had 
inaugurated the custom in order to cut them off 
from any conversation with her. Through all 
171 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

these excursions she was told, sometimes plainly 
and sometimes by inference, that she could never 
hope to understand the Irish: the same old patter 
with which both Pat and John met all her ques- 
tions. Nevertheless she understood a great deal 
more than either of the brothers suspected; and 
incidentally enjoyed herself thoroughly. 

There was one pilgrimage which they frequently 
made. It was to a little cottage high up on the 
side of the glen. Apparently no farm or pasturage 
was attached to it. In a little outhouse there were 
the inevitable donkey and a covey of '‘chuckens.’’ 
There were also always in evidence a baby or 
two and a father and mother. The father seemed 
always to be at home. The only accessory which 
a stranger would seek was a source of income and 
supply. 

No time was wasted in introducing Dorothy to 
the source of so much affluence. 

‘‘Take her ladyship in to see granny,” John 
commanded the woman when he had helped 
Dorothy to dismount. “Fll stay out here with 
the horses.” 

The cottage as it stood in the afternoon sunshine 
might have come from the White City so complete 
was it in every expected detail. The smoke-filled 
outer room, where a baby struggled for breath, 
172 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

and the peat fire made everything blue; the proper 
pots and pans hung round the fireplace; the 
proper loaf of griddle bread burned itself to death 
on the griddle. A young woman led Dorothy past 
all these verities to a little inner room where a 
spotless old woman lay in a spotless bed. 

Granny,” cried Dorothy’s conductor, ^‘here’s 
her young ladyship come to see you.” 

Dorothy stepped across the room — almost one 
stride sufficed — and took the hand outstretched to 
her. It was gnarled and bent and gray like the 
claw of an eagle. 

“God bless your pretty face,” said the old wom- 
an when Dorothy had come into her still wonder- 
ful range of vision. “God bless the pretty face on 
you. There does be quality comes here sometimes 
to look at me, and glory be to God the faces on 
them would turn milk, an’ it fresh from the cow.” 

“Do many people come to see you?” asked 
Dorothy whom John had left uninformed. 

“Of a fine Sunday in summer they comes in 
dhroves an’ they brings their little black boxes wid 
’em for to make picture-post-cyards out of me. 
’Tis a new way they have of making their for- 
tunes.” 

“That must be charming,” said Dorothy still 
vague. 


173 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Bedad is it ?” the dame answered. “On’y Fd 
be thankful to know when they was cornin’. But 
sure we don’t know, an’ herself — ” she nodded 
toward the outer room where the younger woman 
could be heard moving about — “herself kapes me 
ready to be took any minit.” 

And Dorothy saw, with sympathy, that to every- 
thing which might bear a ruffle, a ruffle had been 
attached. They sawed her at neck and wrist. 
Her cap fairly bristled with them. Even her pil- 
lows boasted them and along the top of the sheet 
ran an all-conquering one which threatened mo- 
mentarily to behead her. 

“Your daughter takes great care of you,” Doro- 
thy congratulated her. 

“She’s not me daughter. An’ why shouldn’t 
she was the old person’s cryptic remark. “She’s 
me grandson’s wife, or maybe me great-grand- 
son’s. An’ where would they all be if it wasn’t 
for what they get from the quality cornin’ to see 
me I’m a fortune to them, too.” 

“It must be a great satisfaction to know that 
you’re so valuable to the quality and to — did you 
say your — ^your great-grandson 

“Yiss, or me great-great-grandson belike. No- 
body knows an’ I disremember. I’m a great ould 
ancient age entirely.” 


174 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Indeed you must be.” 

“I am that, one hundred year or maybe two. 
I was born before babies was wrote down in books, 
so nobody knows how old I am. A lamed gentle- 
man come down from Dublin an’ he made it out I 
was a hundred an’ twelve, but sure he only guessed 
it. Woman and girl I lived all them years in Bally- 
creel. A sight of Greshams I’ve seen in power 
over us, your ladyship, an’ you’ll not take it wrong 
if I tell you that the young earl, your husband, is 
the only one of them that ever had a heart. That 
Mr. John,” she added vindictively, “him they calls 
the master, is the worst of the lot. Take an old 
woman’s word for that, and watch him.” 

And when Dorothy rejoined her waiting cava- 
lier she remembered his mother’s words and re- 
flected that the Honourable John might come off 
badly if judged by a jury of “ould ancient” 
ladies. 

Through all the pleasant spring and summer 
days one thought occupied John Gresham, one 
question clamoured for an answer: how to get 
rid of his brother and his brother’s family. Most 
urgently he desired the banishment of his brother’s 
wife. The great wrong of Pitty Pat’s existence 
was bad enough, but now she threatened to bring 
shame and ruin upon him. Those eyes of hers 

175 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

— Pat thought them beautiful, poor fool — were 
as keen and as restless as a hawk’s. And her im- 
pertinence! She had actually asked to be shown 
the books of the estate, saying that she felt idle 
and that book-keeping was her one real accom- 
plishment. No demand could have flecked John 
more sharply on the raw. Ever since Pat’s mar- 
riage they had been concealed, with good reason, 
even from the unsuspicious Jarvis Burke. 

Dorothy’s would be by no means an unsuspicious 
scrutiny. John turned her off with some trivial 
politeness and then sought Pat. He treated that 
long-suffering earl to such a tirade upon his devo- 
tion and upon the ingratitude and suspicion with 
which it was met, that he precipitated a most un- 
happy interview between husband and wife. 

John was delighted with his success, and went 
on to strengthen it whenever opportunity offered. 
He was forever complaining of Dorothy and her 
want of affection and gratitude toward him. 

‘‘I declare,” he burst out, with surer intuition 
than a saner man would have shown, “she resents 
my resemblance to you. I often catch her looking 
at us and I know what she is thinking. Well, I 
suppose married life is agreeable to those who 
fancy it, but it’s remarkably hard on the rest of 
the world.” 


176 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Dear old chap,” said Pat, laying his hand on 
his brother’s shoulder, ‘‘ I know. I feel it, and so 
does Dot.” This was as near as Pat ever allowed 
himself to come to any mention of his brother’s 
great infirmity and the greater abnegation it im- 
posed. 

“The old days were jolly,” John went on. “Do 
you remember how you would bring down some 
fellows and we’d wake the country up for a few 
weeks ? That was life and freedom. No respon- 
sibilities, no hours to keep. Ah! those were the 
days. You seem to have lost spirit since then. 
You never poked about the place for such a length 
of time as this.” 

Pat made no answer and John went away to 
allow his words to take their full effect. 

They did. For Pat, recalling life as it had been 
four or five years ago, found little in it to weigh in 
the balance against Dot and Pitty Pat. 


177 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


D espite John’s efforts it did not take Dot 
long to see that the little village of Ballycreel 
was not quite the happy valley she had thought it 
to be. Sore poverty and discontent seethed below 
its courtesy. Hope gave place to bitterness as the 
days passed and his lordship still strolled or rode 
among his people, friendly, cheerful and irrespon- 
sible. The “master” was still the master. His 
lordship still met their prayers with, “Have you 
asked Mr. Gresham about it.? Well, I will re- 
mind him and see if something can’t be done.” 
And Ballycreel’s dawn of better days died away as 
the master, more moody, more unreasonable and 
more unapproachable than ever went his thunder- 
ous way. 

The slightest show of interest even on the earl’s 
part roused a very devil in his brother. Pat was 
too happy and contented to do more than offer an 
occasional suggestion, but at the slightest word of 
criticism John tendered his resignation and had 
to be bribed back into office with ever fresh prom- 
ises on Pat’s part to leave Glendaire and Bally- 
creel to his management. 

178 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Why don’t you let him go?” Dot had asked 
one day when Pat, made nervous and irritable by 
his brother’s threats, was complaining of John’s 
unreasonable sensitiveness. “He can’t be happy 
here; any one can see that he’s miserably wwhappy. 
Why don’t you let him go, dear ? I am sure you 
and young Burke and I could take care of the place 
quite well. This is a madman’s whim of his 
that only he in all the world can understand the 
people and manage the place. Even I can see 
that you are much more popular than he. Let 
him go.” 

“Where to?” demanded her husband. “Can 
you imagine John any place else ? The mater 
prejudiced you against the poor old chap. I tell 
you, Dot, I wouldn’t willingly hurt his feelings for 
the world. A nice reward it would be for all his 
devotion to turn him out now! And look here. 
Dot, I want you never on any provocation to apply 
that word madman to John. He may be over- 
conscientious, overworked, that’s all.” 

“But if he’s doing harm,” she pointed out. “I 
grant you the place is wonderful, the management 
perfect, but the people are miserable.” 

“Oh! they’ll be all right,” her husband blithely 
answered, “as soon as we get this tobacco scheme 
in operation. John’s working at it now; you have 
179 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

no idea of the amount of work involved in inaugu- 
rating a thing like that/’ 

“Then here at last,” said Dot, “I can help him. 
I have often done that kind of thing with father, 
and your brother can’t refuse to let me take some 
interest in our own concern.” 

“Ay! But he will,” Pat told her. “You 
would have thought that I could have been of 
some use to him, but no. If I go beyond the mere 
theory with him, the poor old chap gets quite hurt 
and feels that I undervalue his services.” 

“But you must, Pat,” cried Dorothy. “Does 
he pretend that he can do the thing without us ? 
That you, who spent years in investigating, are 
not a better authority than he who has just done 
some general reading, or than I who was almost 
brought up in the tobacco field ? Pat, dear, you’re 
unreasonable. Tell him to go the next time he 
makes the threat. And while he’s working off his 
bad temper we’ll have the whole place reorganised, 
the tobacco started and all the people happily em- 
ployed. I really think that in this matter he’s 
working against us, delaying, postponing, and 
meanwhile the people are starving. He puts you 
off by talking about investigating fertilisers and 
the brand of tobacco most suitable to this climate. 
You and I know more about it than all his stuffy 
i8o 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

old authorities. Why don’t you tell him so and 
begin ? We’ll take the responsibility; it is really 
ours, in any case.” 

During the delivery of this long address Dot 
noticed that her husband was not wearing the 
frank and open look which generally characterised 
him. His eyes were almost hostile as he listened 
to her and he sat in silence for some moments after 
she had stopped. 

“My mistake,” said he then slowly, “was in let- 
ting you meet the mater. I can see that now. But 
I thought you were too sensible to be influenced 
by her. I can see, however, that you have sided 
with her against John, and I might as well tell you 
that I’d let the whole tenantry go to the dogs, 
starve, rot or emigrate before I’d offend the man 
who has devoted his life to my interests, before 
I’d drive my brother out of the place which he 
has loved and beautified. He’s a sick, unhappy, 
wretched man, and I wouldn’t cause him an hour’s 
additional unhappiness if it was to make the whole 
glen bloom like a rose. I know as well as you do 
we could get on without him — better perhaps than 
with him — for the people are ungrateful to him — 
but I tell you there’s no secret I would guard from 
him more sacredly than that one. I solemnly be- 
lieve, Dot, that the knowledge would be the death of 

i8i 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

him. Be a good girl and never speak of it 
again.’’ 

Dorothy had reckoned upon Pat’s devotion to 
his brother, but as the time went on she saw 
more and more clearly that John’s influence upon 
everything he touched was harmful. She began 
to see too that life’s problems were coming very 
near to her and to feel that she would have to face 
them alone. Before her marriage her father had 
always championed her; since then her husband’s 
approval and encouragement had been her chief 
stimulant and her chief reward. 


182 


CHAPTER XXIX 


D orothy soon stumbled upon more than 
hearsay evidence of her brother-in-law’s 
methods and morals. She, with Pat and John, were 
riding down to the proposed tobacco fields one 
morning when a headache which had slumbered 
in the background of her mind since breakfast was 
brought to a climax by a canter up a hill, and she 
was forced to declare herself incapable of going 
farther. John was all courtesy; Pat all concern. 
They would return instantly with her. But she 
would not hear of such a course; to go back would 
be as trying as to go forward. They were to go on 
and look at the fields and she would wait in a little 
plantation of pine trees which bordered upon the 
road. They would not be gone more than an hour 
and by that time the quiet, the rest and the cool 
little breeze would have quite restored her. Pat 
wanted to stay and bear her company. 

“If you don’t go on without me,” she threat- 
ened, “ I shall go on with you and most probably 
ride myself into cerebral meningitis — a pleasant 
thing that would be for you to have upon your 

183 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

consciences. Besides, it’s nonsense. I shall be 
quite safe here. We are on our own place, are 
we not, John ? No one will interfere with me. 
Now tie up ‘White Stocking,’ and go away. All 
I want is a little quiet.” 

So the well-trained White Stocking was tied 
to a tree and Dorothy was left to her own devices. 
It was pleasant and very cool under the pine trees. 
Little birds, unlike any she had seen in America, 
came and looked at her. A rabbit loped by. The 
pain in her head became less and less absorbing 
now that her hat was off. The glen lay spread out 
before her, its little farms and cottages clustered 
about its thin church spire. Far at the other end 
lay the village, picturesque enough when distance 
hid its squalor and only the soft pinks and blues 
and yellows of its “whitewashed” cottages could 
be seen. High on the left Glendaire Castle, her 
home, her baby’s fair inheritance. Whenever she 
achieved a moment’s solitude she always set her- 
self with an always unsuccessful effort of realising 
that this was she. Dot Forbes, of Edgecombe. She 
tried to conjure up the Dot Forbes of four or five 
years ago, and to recognise in her the Countess of 
Glamoran of the present. She was thinking a 
little wistfully of her father and wishing all wist- 
fully that the distance which separated her from 
184 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

him were less overwhelming when a young woman 
with a baby in her arms came up the hill and 
stopped just as Dot had done under the shadow of 
the pine trees. Since the advent of Pitty Pat a 
baby had always been irresistible to Dot. At 
the mere sight of one questions bubbled in her. 
How old was it ? Was it a boy or a girl ? How 
much did it weigh ? How many teeth had it ? 
And the answers generally went to prove the great 
precocity and prowess of Pitty Pat. Dot had 
never doubted her son’s superiority over all other 
children, but it was always pleasant to find proof 
of it. So she smiled now at the tired young 
woman and beckoned her into the shade. The 
baby was exhibited and appreciated, the young 
peasant woman, somewhat overawed at first by 
Dorothy’s riding habit, soon grew confidential, 
and when Dorothy spoke of her own boy she 
kindly omitted to emphasise his great perfections. 
The girl, for she was little more, broke out bitterly : 

‘‘Ah ! but it’s different for the likes of you. You 
know what your boy will be coming to. He will 
be a rich man when he grows up like the quality 
that own this place. ’Tis a quare wurrld, ma’am,” 
she went on. “I was up beyont at the big house 
tryin’ would I maybe get to see her new young 
ladyship. An’ a long an’ a weary walk I had for 

185 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

me trouble. That’s me little weeney house you can 
see at the head of the glen amongst the trees. 
She was out when I got there — an’ Mr. Maloney, 
him as is butler there this thirty year, tould me as 
Mr. Gresham has given orders none of us is to be 
let see her. I seen his little lordship, though. A 
gran’ child he is, God bless him.” 

“And why did you want to see her new young 
ladyship 

“About the rint, ma’am. Sure what else ? An’ 
maybe I’d say a word about the roof. Four years 
ago we wor payin’ five pound and now they’ve 
rose it — little by little — to seven. I had me re- 
ceipts here to show to her young ladyship the way 
she’d know it was the truth I’d be telling her. 
You can look at them yourself, ma’am. But sure 
she was out!” she ended with a sob. And she 
regarded the receipts with so much reverence — 
proof as it were of her respectability and of her 
husband’s industry — that Dot perforce took them 
from her outstretched hand and saw that they did 
indeed cover five years rental at a steadily increas- 
ing rate. And each was signed in the accurate 
unmistakable hand of John Gresham. “But this 
year we can’t even pay that. The cow died on us. 
An’ thin herself — me husband’s mother — took a 
could on her chest sleepin’ under the drips ” 

i86 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

^‘The drips ?” 

‘‘In the roof, ma’am. An’ we lost her. An’ 
what with the doctor an’ the buryin’ an’ all, we’re 
behind. An’, ma’am, there’s but one way out of 
it unless Mr. Gresham will be aisy with us. Mike 
will have to go to America or Australia belike, and 
I’ll have to go back with the child to me poor old 
father until he’s able to send for me out to him. 
So I wint up the big house this mornin’ with 
the child in me arms thinkin’, maybe, her new 
young ladyship would say a word for us with Mr. 
Gresham. All Mike wants is time. But sure she 
was out — pleasurin’ belike — an’ Mr. Burke says 
Mr. Gresham wouldn’t listen to him. I don’t 
know what I’ll say to Mike whin he meets me 
at the stile.” 

“You just say to him,” Dot cried, “that you 
didn’t find me at home, but that you met me in the 
wood here and that I told you to tell him how 
sorry I am about his mother, and that I gave you 
six pounds to buy another cow, and that he needn’t 
bother about paying any rent at all until times are 
better with him. And tell him, too, that the roof 
will be mended to-morrow.” 

The girl’s amazement and abasement frightened 
Dot and woke the baby to shrill yells. Abase- 
ment she had seen in southern Europe, but there 
187 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

she always knew it to be a pose, a good-natured 
exaggeration of the buona signora^ s importance and 
beneficence, a joyful recognition of the natural 
fact that she should give and they should take, 
each with perfect grace and propriety. But here 
was no affectation. In the storm of blessings and 
tears with which this girl met Dot’s simple little 
kindness there were the surge and the echo of 
elemental things: life, home, child, the dear sight 
and touch of her husband, all had been given back 
to her by this chance-met stranger on the road- 
side. Great sobs shook her. She handed the 
wondering child to Dot and cast herself face down- 
ward upon the scented ground. And Dot wept 
with her in horror to think that such tragedy had 
been so near, in joy that it had been averted. 

And so that the twin brothers riding back had 
found the sister women. 

“As bad a case as we have in the glen,” John 
remarked when young Mrs. Mulready had ex- 
pressed her dutiful thanks, bobbed many curt- 
seys and hurried up the road. “I suppose she’s 
been working on your sympathies. Our profes- 
sional Irish beggar can beat the world at that.” 

Dot availed herself of the preoccupation nat- 
ural to remounting and made no answer. John 
availed himself of her silence to make his first tac- 

i88 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

deal error. He recognised the clumsiness of it al- 
most as quickly as she did, and he loved her none 
the better for leading him into it. 

“Her brute of a husband,” John explained to 
Pat, “is one of the most undesirable tenants we 
have. Hasn’t paid a penny of rent for three 
years. But, of course, since Dorothy has taken 
the woman under her wing, I shall see that the 
roof is mended. I think Mulready pulled the 
thatch down for his cow’s bedding. You have no 
idea of the sort of thing that goes on here.” 

“Nevertheless,” Dot replied, after she had re- 
covered from the discovery that Pat intended to 
ride silent beside her instead of dashing to her 
support as was his loving habit — “nevertheless, 
I must ask you to fulfil my promises: a roof, six 
pounds and a release from this year’s rent.” 

“Upon condition,” said John, making an un- 
mirthful attempt at gallantry and consideration, 
“ that you consent to let yourself be guarded from 
scenes like this morning’s. You had better refer 
these people to me.” 

“As I do,” Pat remarked. 

“ Precisely. Why should you keep a dog if you 
intend to do your own barking?” 

“Nonsense, dear old chap,” cried his brother, 
accustomed to such ungenial complaining. “Dot 
189 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

had no idea of interfering. It was a most natural 
mistake. She can’t be expected to understand the 
people here.” 

“But I hope,” Dot persisted, “to understand 
some of them in time. Lies and liars are not un- 
known in the Nutmeg State,” and the pretty little 
smile with which she made this admission was 
quite lost upon the Honourable John. Only Pat 
caught it and flashed back: 

“ Set a thief to catch a thief. Leave an Irishman 
to deal with the Irish.” And again there was no 
laughter on John’s face as they rode on. And Dot 
knew that between her and the accomplishment 
of Ballycreel’s salvation stood the sinister figure of 
John Gresham: dishonest, diseased, shunning the 
co-operation which would inevitably spell detection 
and strong enough, as she amazedly admitted, to 
keep her from the accomplishment of her designs 
and even to take from her the full enthusiasm of 
her husband’s loyalty. Between these two stood 
Patrick Gresham, easy-tempered, stubborn and 
amazed. There was nothing in his simple heart 
which would help him to understand this situation. 
John was the best chap in the world; Dot was the 
dearest woman. How could he have foreseen that 
they would disagree ? Yet to disagree seemed their 
evident intention, and Pat resented very earnestly 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

the confusion of mind which they thrust upon him. 
He knew, of course, that Dot was right in principle, 
but he could not understand why she burned to put 
that principle into practice when she knew that 
its accomplishment meant hurting the feelings of 
the brother to whom he insisted upon considering 
himself so overwhelmingly indebted. He vaguely 
wished that he could find some harmless outlet for 
her energies, and when they reached the castle he 
found that the American mail had provided it. 

Dorothy looked up from her letters to announce 
that a long-promised, oft-postponed plan was at 
last to be carried out. 

‘‘Mother and father sail on the Lusitania next 
Wednesday. Oh! Pat, darling, isn’t it splendid! 
I never dared to quite believe they’d come.” 

“ It’s the best news I’ve heard for a century,” Pat 
acquiesced heartily. “John, you’ll be delighted 
with Mr. Forbes. He'll be able for you. I’m not, 
of course. I’m only a duffer — but there’s nothing 
he doesn’t know about estates and tobacco and 
that sort of thing. He’ll put you up to no end of 
dodges.” 

“That will be most kind of him,” said John. 
“I shall be delighted.” But his delight fell from 
him as he closed the door of the oak room. 
Jarvis Burke looked up from his work. 

191 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“‘The Vulgarian/” said John, '‘has a great 
honour in store for us. In about ten days we are 
to be introduced to her most remote ancestors, her 
father and mother.” 


192 


CHAPTER XXX 



'O prediction could have been less welcome to 


X Al John Gresham than that contained in Pat's 
wholly innocent words about Mr. Forbes's expe- 
rience of estate management and the enlighten- 
ment which he, John, would derive from it. John 
did not crave enlightenment in any form, and he 
was under no necessity of being put up to dodges. 
By a simple dodge of his own since the birth of 
Pitty Pat, he had deflected twenty thousand pounds 
of his brother’s money to his own bank account, 
and he knew that there would be no chance of 
blinding or distracting such a man as Dorothy’s 
father was described to be. He had lately begun 
to feel that deceiving even Dorothy was growing 
difficult. Therefore his nerves and temper grew 
steadily worse. 

Dot and Pat motored into Dublin to meet the 
Forbeses. Poor Jarvis Burke was harried and crit- 
icised incessantly. When no other crime or short- 
coming of his presented itself, John could always 
fall back upon his clerk's admiration of “The 
Vulgarian" and predictions as to what her parents 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

would be. They had had no three years of prepa- 
ration such as their daughter had enjoyed. To 
John’s distraught mind and raging envy Burke’s 
loyalty to the young countess was a personal insult. 
He did not, however, suffer it in silence, and Jarvis 
found it hard to bear the continual abuse and ridi- 
cule, the carping petty fault-finding, the sneers 
and hatred to which John Gresham devoted his 
eloquence during the time which separated the 
arrival of Forbes’s letter and the morning upon 
which Dot and Pat motored into Dublin to meet 
the steamer train from Queenstown. 

Mr. Forbes was alone, but in answer to Dot’s 
anxious and amazed inquiries, he replied: 

‘‘There, there, honeybunch, don’t you fret. 
Mother’s all right. Why, daughter, ain’t you glad 
enough to see your dad ? Ain’t one parent enough 
at a time to come visiting. Now, don’t you fret 
and worry about mother.” 

“But where is she?” reiterated Dot. 

“Well, now,” her father answered, “you wait 
until James and I get my trunk away from these 
baggage-smashers, and then I’ll tell you all about 
it. But don’t you fuss yourself; mother’s all right. 
Do you suppose I’d be here if she wasn’t ?” 

This was a reassuring consideration, and Dot 
comforted herself with it while Mr. Forbes, his 


194 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

son-in-law and Janies rescued two new steamer 
trunks and an old dress-suit case from the maw of 
the luggage van and the clutches of the porters. 

James had come up from Glendaire more slowly 
with the luggage waggon, and him Forbes greeted 
with great cordiality. He was, in fact, delighted 
with everything, but most of all with Dot, who had, 
he maintained — greatly to her indignation — grown 
several inches since he had last seen her. 

The age, the dignity, and the size of Dublin sur- 
prised him. Though somewhat better informed 
than his daughter, he was quite unprepared for the 
capital of despised Ireland. Its wide streets, its 
stately public buildings and busy traffic amazed 
him, and the glimpse he caught of Trinity College, 
its venerable buildings surrounding its brilliant 
lawns, overwhelmed him and would have struck 
him dumb if he had not been so full of conversa- 
tion. 

‘‘About mother now,’’ he began, in answer to 
Dot’s entreaties. They had by this time passed 
through the worst of the traffic, and were speeding 
out toward the open country. “Well, daughter, I 
hope you ain’t going to feel hurt about her; but, 
iust as the last moment, mother found she couldn’t 
do it.” 

“Do what.^” questioned Dot. 

195 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

'‘Leave The House,” answered her father sol- 
emnly. "She got everything ready; she fixed it 
so Mrs. Petty would come up every day and see 
after the two girls we were going to leave there; 
she got all her clothes ready and packed, and then 
she found it was too much for her. She couldn’t 
leave The House alone. So she stayed and I came 
over to see how our baby is getting along. So 
far as I can see,” turning to Pat, "she’s getting 
along all right.” 

"Oh! I am, I am,” cried Dot; "but what about 
mother.? How is she going to get along without 
either of us ?” 

"That,” Forbes answered, "is something I 
thought about considerable on the boat. By the 
way, I had a great time on the boat. There was a 
tobacco man there from Virginia, Edgar Wharton; 
you both know him, or, at least, know of him.” 

They signified assent. 

"Well, we found one another early in the game, 
and he introduced me around quite a bit. He 
knew lots of the passengers, and say. Dot, you’d 
be proud of your old daddy if you could have seen 
what a good sea-dog he made. I tell you, I am go- 
ing to travel every year from now on, and mother’s 
going to travel, too. She would have just loved 
it. ril explain to you my little idea about mother 
196 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

when IVe time. Just now I want to look at the 
country/’ 

And there were plenty of strange sights to catch 
his shrewd eye. The jaunting cars, the donkey 
carts, the numerous and expensive motor cars, 
the high stone walls, topped sometimes by ivy 
and sometimes by broken glass — that libel upon 
Irish hospitality — the brilliant green of the grass 
and trees, the unaccustomed bareness of the 
mountains, the wonderful roads — all fascinated 
him. 

“It isn’t a bit queer,” he said. “Somehow it 
looks all right. It isn’t a bit like anything I ever 
saw, and it’s less like what I expected. But its 
fine! I thought it was much greener; I don’t call 
a country very green when all the mountains are 
yellow and purple. Is it flowers that makes them 
look like that? You know I can’t remember ever 
seeing a mountain that wasn’t covered with trees; 
these strike me as funny. Is it flowers?” he re- 
peated. 

“Gorse and heather,” answered Pat; “and as 
for the trees, they vanished hundreds of years ago. 
Every army that ever invaded Ireland cleared all 
the land they could because the forests proved such 
good cover for the natives. The only way to keep a 
forest open to travellers was to cut down every 
197 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

tree in it. That is the reason,” he added, ‘That 
we’re burning peat or importing coal now. We 
have coal of our own, but we don’t use it. We 
import what we want and export what we have. 
We lose money both ways. We have a natural 
passion for bad bargains.” 

“Well,” Forbes answered, “it don’t sound right 
to me. But it’s your own business and I suppose 
you understand it. I’m glad it ain’t mine.” 

He found several occasions to make this reflec- 
tion. Glendaire delighted him, but the little village 
of Ballycreel in the valley disgusted and amazed 
him when he walked through it before dinner, on 
the first evening of his visit. Dorothy rather 
dreaded the expression of his opinion at dinner 
and tried during the earlier courses of the meal to 
keep the conversation in America. 

The meeting between Forbes and John Gresham 
had passed off quietly. John assumed his only 
agreeable role — that of host — and Forbes was 
greatly interested in this man so like his son-in- 
law, yet so unlike. 

“A cleverer man than Pat,” had been his ver- 
dict; “got a stronger will, too, but I wouldn’t trust 
him as far as I could throw him. What’s he doing 
round here anyway?” 

Pat had later elucidated the latter point. 

198 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Managing for you?’’ repeated Mr. Forbes. 
“What’s the matter with you that you can’t 
manage your own business?” 

Pat explained. 

“Maybe so, maybe so,” Forbes answered, “but 
you are a young man, Pat, and a strong one, 
and a good one. Your brother may be all that 
you say, but so far as I can see that’s no reason 
for him to do your work* and for you to live here 
doing nothing. I say,” he pointed out, with a 
kindly hand on Pat’s shoulder, “so far as I can 
see — of course, I ain’t seen very far — it’s your own 
business, son, and I’ve always found that people 
get along better in this world by attending strictly 
to their own business, which” — and he laughed 
good humouredly — “ I ain’t doing now, but which 
I intend to do from now on.” 

His prowl had led him to still graver doubts 
and questions, but according to his theory he 
would have left them unexpressed had not John 
Gresham seen fit to cross-question him at dinner 
with the purpose of quarrelling with him as soon 
as possible and of then making capital of his 
injured feelings and refusing further commerce 
with the new-comer. 

“Tell us, Mr. Forbes,” he insisted, “what you 
thought of the village. First impressions are al- 
199 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

ways interesting, and I suppose you have never 
seen anything like it before/’ 

Forbes met his eyes quietly. “No,” he an- 
swered, “I don’t know as I have.” 

“In what way, sir,” questioned Jarvis Burke, 
“did it strike you as being unusual?” 

“In its relation to this house,” was the answer, 
“in its contrast to it. I never saw human beings 
live in anything so small and dark as those huts, 
and I never lived myself nor knew any one that 
lived in a house as elaborate and expensive and 
beautiful as this one. I thought such contrasts 
were out of date.” 

“Perhaps they are in your country,” said 
John. 

“Excuse me,” Forbes replied, “we never had 
them there.” 

“America,” said John, “is too new to have 
found its levels. It took twelve or fourteen hun- 
dred years for Ballycreel to go down and Glen- 
daire to go up.” 

“You mean that you have had the upper hand 
for all that time ?” 

“Yes.” 

“That you have ruled here?” 

“Yes.” 

“That you have drawn your income, your social 


200 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

position, from the village and the outlying farms 
in the glen ? ” 

‘‘Yes, until about a hundred years ago when 
this land agitation began. Since then weVe in- 
vested in other things.” 

“I know that,” said Forbes, “but still it’s your 
tenants and your land that make you what you 
are. Lords of the manor, the Glamorans of Glen- 
daire. They give the kid his title, don’t they?” 

“I suppose so,” John admitted. 

“Well,” said Forbes slowly, “you ask me what 
I think. I think that Ballycreel would have been 
better off and happier if there never had been a 
Gresham at Glendaire. That’s what I think. Of 
course you have your views, and I’d like to go into 
them; I’d like to understand this system. We’ll 
have to talk it over when I get back.” 

“Back!” echoed Dot. “Why, father dear, 
where are you going?” 

“I’m going to Edgecombe, daughter,” Forbes 
answered. “Mother ought to be here, and I pro- 
pose to fetch her. By the time I get there I guess 
she’ll have had enough of living in an empty house. 
And even if she hasn’t, I can tell her enough about 
you all and this lovely place to brace her up enough 
to come over. Give me some of those snap-shots 
you have of her viscount, and if they don’t fetch her 


201 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

ril eat them. Fve seen many a kid/’ said Forbes 
judicially, “ but never one I put in your class, daugh- 
ter, until I saw my grandson. He’ll fetch mother. 
And I don’t mind saying,” he went on, with his 
charming smile, “because I think it reflects great 
credit on my judgment — I don’t mind saying I 
picked a wife that I can’t get along without. So 
I’m going home to get her. This is Thursday; I’ll 
catch the Saturday boat.” 


202 


CHAPTER XXXI 


D orothy FORBES had never loved her 
father as passionately as did the Countess 
of Glamoran. Even the two days that he spent at 
Glendaire Castle were enough to rekindle in her 
all the enthusiasms and ideals which had languished 
in the plaintive air of Ireland. Before his arrival 
she had determined to tell him nothing of the per- 
plexities of her position. Before he left she knew, 
though he had said no word, that he had surmised 
them all, that he sympathised and understood 
even the smallest emotional item She saw, too, 
to her delight, that Pat grew momentarily more 
like his American self and that the affection and 
admiration existing between the two men in no- 
wise changed. Indeed, Forbes’s feeling toward his 
son-in-law increased rather than diminished when 
he saw to what perfection of charm and culture Dor- 
othy had attained under his loving care. She was 
the most radiant, gracious, beautiful creature he 
had ever seen. All that he had ever dreamed for 
her was here. Her life was noble, dignified, free 
from care and happy except where John Gresham’s 
203 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

shadow fell across it, and he reflected, that shadow 
would soon be gone — Pat would break out. And 
Pat, irritated by John’s sick selfishness and self- 
assertion, rejoiced in the warm, honest affection 
of his wife’s father. Nothing had occurred since 
the Glamorans’ return to Ireland which drew 
husband and wife so close to one another as this 
shooting star from Edgecombe, gone almost as soon 
as it appeared. For, true to his determination, 
Forbes sailed for America on the Saturday after 
his arrival. 

The succeeding Wednesday brought a telegram 
from Queenstown. It threw them into a maze of 
speculation, for it ran: 

“Meet 12.15 train Kingsbridge Station, Dublin, 
to-day. Forbes.” 

The most reasonable conjecture which they 
could form was that Mr. Forbes had been deflected 
by the beauties of Killarney and of southern Ire- 
land; that he had abandoned his purpose of re- 
turning to Edgecombe, and was coming back to 
them. They were, therefore, quite unprepared for 
the fluttered, almost tearful appearance of Mrs. 
Forbes in a most elaborate travelling gown and a 
perfect flgck of porters. 

“Oh, my dears, my dears,” she gasped, when at 
last she became articulate. “ I just couldn’t stand 

204 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

it over there without father, not for one other 
minute. Where is he ? Didn’t he come in with 
you ?” she marvelled. 

‘‘No,” answered Dot, “no; darling, he could not 
come in with us this morning.” 

“ He isn’t sick ? ” demanded her mother. “ Don’t 
tell me father’s sick. I just knew he would be 
with no one to remind him about wearing his 
heavy flannels on the boat. He never did have 
any judgment about flannels.” 

“No, dear, no, he’s not sick,” Dot reassured 
her; “he’s just as well as well can be.” 

“Then why didn’t he come?” , 

“Because, darling — ” Dot began, then halted 
and tried again. “You see, dearest mother, he 
missed you — he missed you terribly.” 

“Yes,” panted Mrs. Forbes, “and I missed 
him.” 

“Of course you did,” her daughter acquiesced. 
“And so he made up his mind to do just what you 
were making up your mind to do.” 

“I was making up my mind?” repeated Mrs. 
Forbes vaguely. 

“Yes, darling.” 

“ — ^To come over to him.” 

“Well, and he was making up his mind to go 
back for you.” 


205 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

'‘Then where is he ?” demanded her bewildered 
mother. 

“Now, you’re not going to feel badly about it,” 
Dot urged. “You see, it will be all right in just a 
little while. But father sailed on the Lucania last 
Saturday to go back to Edgecombe to fetch you. 
He is now some place on the ocean having a 
lovely time, for he told us, didn’t he, Pat, that he 
loved to travel.” But Mrs. Forbes was beyond 
the reach of such comfort. She fell into tears. 

“Gone!” she repeated; “father’s gone!” 

“To fetch you,” Dot reminded her. 

But Mrs. Forbes wept on. “And on the 
Lucaniay too. Why, Dorothy, we passed the 
Lucania a day or two ago. They wanted me to 
go and look at her, but she was on the other side of 
the ship and I was all settled in my steamer chair 
and too lazy to move. And father went by! I 
let him go by!” she added excitedly, as though a 
slight effort on her part might have averted the 
catastrophe. “I just sat in my deck chair and let 
him go all the way back to Edgecombe. I came 
four thousand miles to be with him and now you 
tell me he’s gone ! How perfectly, perfectly awful ! ” 

“Of course we told you,” said Pat, trying to re- 
lieve the tragedy of the atmosphere. “We thought 
we might as well, since you’d be likely to notice it.” 

206 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Stern determination flashed into Mrs. Forbes’s 
gentle face. “James,” she cried — for history had 
repeated itself and James was again presiding over 
the luggage — “James, you put every one of my 
things back on the platform again.” 

“Ma’am?” cried James. 

“Mother!” cried Dot. 

“What now?” asked Pat, all in varying shades 
of remonstrance. 

“I mean what I say,” announced Mrs. Forbes. 
“Have them put on the platform. Pm going to 
take the next train home.” 

Unfortunately one of the big liners was to touch 
at Queenstown that night, and most unfortunately 
Mrs. Forbes knew it. No remonstrances, no 
prayers could hold her. In vain they represented 
the loss of time involved in her plan; in vain they 
pointed out that the sensible course would be to 
wait with them at Glendaire until Mr. Forbes — to 
whom they could cable — should return to her and 
to them. 

“ If you try to follow him,” Pat calculated for her, 
“it will be nearly three weeks before you’re both 
back with us.” 

“But it will be only five days,” Mrs. Forbes re- 
plied, “before I get back to father. I’ll send him 
a cable to wait for me in New York, and I’ll get 
207 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

there two or three days after he does. We’ll come 
over together to visit you just as we always planned 
to, and just as we would have done if I hadn’t been 
so foolish about The House.” 

‘‘By the way,” asked Pat, “how is The House ?” 

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Forbes wildly and 
defiantly, “and I don’t care. I went to New York 
to say good-bye to father; well, when I got back to 
Edgecombe I simply couldn’t bear to go into that 
house. I stayed one night at Kenny’s Hotel.” 

“Oh, mother,” remonstrated Dot. “You 
couldn’t!” 

“I did,” repeated her mother, with a flashing 
eye, “and then I went back to New York so as to 
be there to get the first boat. I made up my mind 
that never again would I let anything separate me 
from father. I am going back to him now, and I 
hope you children will understand and be pleasant 
about it, because” — and she clenched her gray- 
gloved hand — “because I am going right straight 
back to him. I don’t care what you say.” 

“Bravo!” said Pat; and he kissed her. “I’ll 
arrange it for you — luncheon first.” 


208 


CHAPTER XXXII 


T he visit of the reunited Forbeses began much 
as other visits, whether of parents-in-law or 
casual acquaintances, must. They were shown 
the glories and the curiosities of Glendaire. They 
were driven to points of interest in the neighbour- 
hood. They made the acquaintance of the dozen 
athletic young men and women who came to play 
tennis or croquet, to drink tea or to flirt in the 
gardens. 

These young people delighted Mrs. Forbes, 
and they in turn were delighted with her. She 
officiated at the tea-table till the weary contestants 
came to her for refreshment, and then she would 
sit in a bevy of these light-hearted youngsters and 
listen to their nonsense. She belonged to a Folk- 
Lore Society in Connecticut and thought to im- 
prove the shining hour — the very shining hour — 
by gathering Irish folk tales, and her new young 
friends supplied her with wonderful specimens. 

Her chief informant was a red-headed young 
subaltern from a regiment stationed near Glen- 
daire. He had a great gift for narration and an 
utter contempt for facts. 

209 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

'‘Now the banshee, Mrs. Forbes,’’ said he one 
day when the heat had stopped all but the most 
enthusiastic tennis players. " I wonder if you quite 
understand the power of the Irish banshee.” 

Dorothy from her long chair near her mother 
threw a threatening eye upon him and he returned 
it with a most unregenerate one. 

“The banshee,” he went on pleasantly, “howls 
by night, never by day. It’s a mixture of vulture, 
a woman, a little parsley sauce on its hair and — ” 

Dot sat up and glared at him. 

“I withdraw the parsley sauce. It bays like a 
dog, it howls like a wolf and it always means 
death.” 

“Death.?” repeated Mrs. Forbes in dismay. 

“Death,” he answered. “If one of those things, 
and they’re common enough, should come crying 
round your chimneys some night, the whole lot of 
you would find yourselves dead in the morning. 
When you are writing your notes on the banshee 
put it down as a bird to be avoided.” 

“I will,” promised Mrs. Forbes. 

“Would you like me to tell you,” young Har- 
rington went on, “about the ghosts and the 
legends and the horrors that belong to this house, 
ay, this very house in which ye live so thought- 
lessly ?” 


210 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Again Dot warned him, this time with uplifted 
finger. 

“Nay, nay, your ladyship,” he answered obe- 
diently, “I don’t intend to do it now. I have no 
wish to cast a gloom over yon innocent prattlers,” 
and he pointed with his teaspoon at John Gresham 
and Renira Banbridge, who at a little distance from 
the others were sitting in moody silence which 
seemed now to be their normal state. 

John favoured the man of war with a glare 
which might have blighted a less confident spirit, 
but young Harrington went serenely on. 

“If Mrs. Forbes will meet me in the fairy dell 
to-night between three I shall a tale unfold ” 

“You ridiculous youth,” said Dorothy, “what 
do you mean by between three?” 

“I don’t know,” said Harrington. “ ’Tis the 
hour of tryst. There are a great many more un- 
pleasant stories connected with this castle than 
any of you know about.” 

Mrs. Forbes enjoyed herself so thoroughly that 
when the last of the guests had gone she forgot 
her custom of silence and turned to address John 
Gresham. 

“ I don’t know when I have had such a perfect 
day,” said she, “and I never felt more at home in 
my life, even at The House.” 


2II 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“You flatter us/’ said Gresham. 

It was manifestly impossible in the presence of 
Mrs. Forbes’s geniality for John to maintain his 
role of host. Mrs. Forbes made herself his hos- 
tess, watched for his comfort, gave him little talks 
on health and flannels and earned an enmity only 
less vindictive than that which John accorded 
the young countess. Both she and her husband 
regarded him with acute pity, and when they met 
Renira and realised her tragedy they mothered 
and fathered and petted her as they did every 
sick or sorrowful fellow-creature. 

“When we go on our travels,” Mrs. Forbes 
would say, in her comfortable cheery voice, “we’ll 
take you with us. Our own little girl can’t very 
well come with us, and there was always a girl in 
our plans and I’m sure your mother would be 
willing to lend you to us.” 

Renira was grateful and doubtful. Her life at 
present was one hideous blend of love for John, of 
knowledge that she could never marry him and of 
terror at his wild outbreaks. Many a saner man 
ambled about the wards of many a lunatic asylum. 
His two worst obsessions were that Glendaire was 
his and that “The Vulgarian” with all her troupe 
— even with Pat, if necessary — were to be driven 
out of it. 


212 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

When Mrs. Forbes before speaking to Renira 
had laid her project before her husband he had 
hailed it with enthusiasm. 

^‘The very thing/’ said he; '‘as nice and sweet 
a girl as I ever saw — clever, too, and entertaining 
when that Gresham ain’t fussing her up. Has it 
occurred to you, mother, that we’re going to have 
trouble with that darned barnacle ? Well, we are. 
We’ll stay and see it through and then you and 
I and Renira Banbridge will light out for the 
wonders of the world. But trouble first, mother, 
trouble first.” 


213 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


W HEN the Hon. John Gresham understood 
that it was Renira, not Dorothy, who was to 
be swept from his path, he vanished altogether into 
his own suite of rooms, refused to admit either Pat 
or the doctor, and terrified Pierre, his already terri- 
fied man-servant, into silence. Every one believed 
he was undergoing an attack of his old disorder, 
and he was, and when at last he emerged, shaken, 
furtive and exhausted, poor Renira had cause to 
bless the chance which had thrown the Forbeses 
in her way. Renira’s mother had hailed the idea 
of her daughter’s liberation with incredulous grat- 
itude. Bitterly she had mourned the heart-break 
she could do nothing to ease. 

No one thought of Sir Richard Banbridge as a 
factor in the arrangements. He never seemed to 
be aware of the presence or absence of his offspring, 
but when he returned from a Kerry horse show and 
discovered that a plan had matured during his 
absence he promptly put his foot on it and set his 
countenance against it. Renira on the verge of 
tears reported this at the castle and John Forbes 
214 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

set out in a dog-cart to interview the baronet at the 
Monastery. Sir Richard was reported as being 
in the stables and Forbes caused himself to be 
driven there. Forbes was in exactly the costume 
in which Pat had first seen him and he now re- 
moved his broad straw hat and ran his fingers 
through his mane of hair. 

‘‘Looks a darn sight better than the house,” 
he commented. And several long-necked hunters 
stretched inquiring heads over the half-doors of 
their loose boxes. Presently Banbridge appeared, 
thin, red-faced, irascible, but for the moment a 
gentleman. 

“May I ask — ” he began. 

“Pm John Forbes from over Glendaire way. 
My daughter is Pat Gresham’s wife, and I’ve 
driven over to have a few words with you.” 

“You antedate my intention by less than an 
hour,” Banbridge replied. “I had intended driv- 
ing over to see you.” 

He led the way to the house and into a musty 
apartment dignified by the name of study. It was 
full of stuffed creatures and their glassy eyes struck 
Forbes unpleasantly. So did his host. And so, 
most of all, did his host’s first remark. 

“I understand, Mr. Forbes, that you have al- 
lowed yourself to form some quixotic plans in re- 

215 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

gard to one of my girls. I wish you to understand, 
sir, that the Misses Banbridge are not objects of 
charity.’* 

“Well, now,” said Forbes slowly, “that de- 
pends ” 

“Sir!” snapped Banbridge. 

“ — on what you mean by charity. Take it in 
its Bible meaning and I guess it’s just what they 
all of them need. But I didn’t come over to argue 
with you. I’ve come to hear your objection to my 
wife’s plan to combine her own pleasure with Miss 
Renira’s. Mrs. Banbridge has nothing against it.” 

“Mrs. Banbridge is a fool.” 

“Maybe; maybe. I can see one foolish thing 
she did.” 

Banbridge looked at him quickly. What did 
the boor mean ? Was it possible ? No, he de- 
cided, it was not. He had by sheer vileness of tem- 
per and vocabulary lorded it over the neighbour- 
hood for so many years that he considered it im- 
possible that this ponderous slow-voiced stranger 
could be laughing at him. In all the archives of the 
Monastery, no one had ever laughed at Rich- 
ard Banbridge. 

“And so,” Forbes was going on, “the ladies were 
so upset about this thing that I thought we’d better 
get together on it. Now what’s your objection ? If 
216 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

you want to know anything about me you can ask 
the earl. Tve got several connections in London, 
too, and I guess Fll come out all right. Mrs. 
Forbes is the loveliest woman in the world, and I 
want to know, since the girl’s mother is willing, 
what you’ve got against the plan.” 

“I decline,” said Sir Richard, “to give any rea- 
son. I simply forbid it.” 

“Just going to shut down on it like a snapping- 
turtle ? Well, the other two poor girls look like 
you brought them up on some such system.” 

“The indulgent American parent,” sneered Ban- 
bridge. “We don’t go in for that sort of thing 
over here.” 

“Funny,” mused Forbes, “’cause we got your 
like over there. We call them,” he remarked, 
“skunks. And we don’t care one particular damn 
about them. Now that’s how I feel about you, and 
that’s the reason that whether you like it or whether 
you don’t Miss Renira is going with us. And 
if you try to interfere or to make her unhappy I’ll 
come over here and I’ll break your back. I broke 
a man in the factory once, a fine fellow he was, too, 
but he went crazy in the engine-room and threatened 
to bust the whole place up and kill all the boys and 
girls. He was strong, but I was stronger, but I 
couldn’t hold him. He was getting away from me 
217 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

and so I busted him to save the lot. I don’t be- 
lieve we’ll quite get to that. I guess you’d better 
think it over again. It so happens that we’ve both 
got sample daughters to produce. You’ve got Miss 
Betty and Miss Joan. They’re your raising. I’ve 
got my Dorothy, and I guess any expert would 
give me the blue. I guess that ’ll be about all I 
have to say. Miss Renira comes with us.” 

‘‘Take her and be damned to you,” was the 
fatherly benediction. 


218 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


S IR RICHARD BANBRIDGE was still in the 
trance produced by conversing with a gentle- 
man who spoke so simply of killing people with his 
bare hands, when the Hon. John Gresham was 
announced. 

“Fve come,’’ said he, ‘‘to see you about this 
ridiculous proposal to allow Renira to go wander- 
ing up and down the world with my dear sister- 
in-law’s people. That’s only the thin end of the 
wedge. I believe there’s a scheme on foot to adopt 
her altogether.” 

“They’re entirely welcome to her,” responded 
the fond parent. “They may have Betty too, and 
Joan but I suppose that would be expecting too 
much.” 

John began to swear with ingenious blasphemy 
that he would prevent Renira’s going. 

“If you try it,” said Banbridge “there’s a gen- 
tleman in a straw hat and a white waistcoat who 
will break your back across his knee. He called 
upon me this afternoon to make the announce- 
ment. I’ve been threatened with shooting many 
a time and never paid any attention to the fools, 
219 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

but there’s something horrible in the thought of 
being scrunched up by that big man’s big hands. 
And he looked,” added Banbridge, ‘‘tolerably in 
earnest.” 

“He would,” John acquiesced. “And the worst 
of it is that he’s quite up to doing the thing. Do 
you know Thunderbolt — but of course you do, you 
sold him to me — well, the countess, ‘her new little 
ladyship,’ bah! took a fancy to him and thought 
she’d like to try him. She knows as much about 
riding as Pat has taught her since they arrived. 
We were down at the stables, she and her father 
and I, and she was in her habit, so they put a side- 
saddle on Thunderbolt.” 

“ Rather close to murder, that,” said Banbridge. 

“It was entirely her own idea,” John answered, 
“and it was her own horse, too. It was no affair 
of mine. Well, of course. Thunderbolt reared. 
He’d never felt a riding skirt flapping against him, 
so up he went with Dorothy, who had no more 
idea of what to do than an infant. The men were 
afraid to run it, but that brute, Forbes, caught each 
side of the bridle in a hand like a man-trap and 
simply dragged that horse back to earth. As soon 
as he got him there he whips up his off fore leg and 
Thunderbolt was about as dangerous as an arm- 
chair — couldn’t move, of course — then down slips 


220 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Dorothy as calm as a sunset and says she * did en- 
joy it so/ Now what do you expect to do against 
a man like that?” 

“He must be an awful trial,” said Banbridge 
sympathetically. “You may not be able for him 
in the open, but there are other, quieter ways, 
my boy.” 

John threw away his cigar and rose. “He’s as 
bad in quiet ways. I haven’t an instant’s peace, 
and that girl of his is as bad as he. What do you 
think their latest is? To look over the books! 
To see whether the estate will bear the introduc- 
tion of tobacco. I got Pat to head them off. But 
what’s the use of heading off a wild man who slays 
things with his hands.” 

“Never heard of anything like it in my life,” 
said Banbridge. “The Hunt ought to take the 
matter up. It must be devilish for you over 
there, but all the same I’m not going to keep 
Renira here for you to make a laughing stock of 
her. You can’t marry her. I can’t do anything 
for her alive or dead, so if this Gargantua of a 
fellow is willing to assume the expense of her, 
he’s welcome to her. She’s no use to me. You 
spoiled me. You spoiled her. You’ve made a 
regular sniveller of her, and she the most prom- 
ising filly of the lot.” 


221 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Will you keep her,” said John, “if I can get 
rid of the Americans — perhaps of Pat — and we all 
settle down to the old quiet life?’’ 

“Perhaps,” acquiesced Banbridge — “perhaps 
she wouldn’t snivel so much then.” 

And John rode moodily back to Glendaire, re- 
volving new and old plots to achieve his purpose. 


222 


CHAPTER XXXV 


A fter a sleepless night John Gresham ap- 
peared in a terrible state of temper. He 
felt that he must make some one suffer or lose the 
remnants of his reason. He first tried Jarvis 
Burke, but the confidence, the open trust and 
liking with which the whole family treated him, 
made him unsafe as an outlet for wrath. He 
next went to the stables and attacked a groom, but 
the groom, spoiled by the presence and sweet rea- 
sonableness of my lord and my lady turned and 
walked away from him. 

Then as he stood in the sunshine of the stable 
yard he remembered one spot in all the island 
where he could create fear and command obe- 
dience. He ordered the saddle put on one of the 
strongest horses in the stables and, as he left the 
gates, turned toward the mountain which lay at 
the head of the glen. 

The road soon died away but John rode on. 
Following sheep paths among the heather and 
sometimes leaving even those faint tracks and strik- 
ing across stony furze-covered territory, he came 
223 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

at last to a road upon the other side of the moun- 
tain and followed it for five or six miles. It was 
almost two years since he had last ridden that way, 
though it had once been familiar to him. He 
could not have accounted for his impulse to take 
it now. Perhaps it was the knowledge that here 
at least he was lord paramount. Here were crea- 
tures who lived by his favour, and who could be 
made to bear some of the burden of his despera- 
tion. 

He stopped at a cottage: a miserable affair 
built against the side of the hill which formed its 
rear wall. Its thatched roof was frowsy and grass- 
grown; its door hung awry, but these structural 
deficiencies had not daunted the spirit of its ten- 
ant. A red-blossomed geranium showed between 
the curtains of the single tiny window, more 
sturdy flowers grew against the house, and the 
wall bore a coat of immaculate whitewash. A 
tiny shed leaned against one end of the cottage — it, 
too, was whitewashed. Large stones marked the 
pathway from the road-side to the door — a dis- 
tance of about four feet — and they, too, were 
whitewashed. 

At John’s approach an old woman looked out 
at the open upper half of the door — and it is to be 
hoped that the visitor was not in search of wel- 
224 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

come, for surely there was none in that hostile, 
dauntless old face. 

“So you’ve come,” was her greeting. “At last, 
at long last.” 

“Have you anything to complain of?” said 
Gresham. “Hasn’t the money reached you regu- 
larly? I needn’t ask, I should have heard from 
you. Is the child well ?” 

“He is,” she answered shortly. 

“Show him to me,” John commanded. 

“He’s within with the little baste,” she replied, 
and went to the door of the shed. “Mickey,” 
she cried, “come here to me out of that and talk 
to the gentleman.” 

“What gentleman?” asked a clear little voice, 
and a child, golden-headed, blue-frocked, bare- 
footed and fearless, came out into the sunshine. 
A donkey and several hens followed him. They 
all stood and stared at the handsome man on the 
handsome horse while he stared at the boy. He 
was perhaps nine or ten months older than Pitty 
Pat, but poverty had matured him. Pitty Pat 
was a baby; this was a responsible member of 
society. Nevertheless the likeness between the 
two was startling. 

“Come here,” called Gresham, and the child 
approached unfalteringly and looked up at him 
225 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

with untroubled eyes. ‘‘Are you afraid of horses 
he asked. 

“Am I what.?’’ 

“Afraid!” 

“I am not afraid,” said the child simply. 

“You don’t look it,” John admitted. And 
certainly there was no trace of fear in his earnest 
little face. That earnestness, John decided, was 
the chief difference between this boy and “The 
Vulgarian’s” pampered brat. Otherwise they 
might be — great Heaven, here was the way! wait- 
ing placidly in this cabin while he had been tearing 
his mind to reach impossible ineffectual ways. 
Here was a certainty. Let Dorothy catch a 
glimpse of this boy older than hers but in other 
respects his twin. Arrange that she could find no 
explanation. Get the child and his grandmother 
into another county if necessary. What could be 
more simple ? There was only one necessary con- 
dition and that was the absence of Pat. And 
Pat, blast him, seemed to have taken root in Glen- 
daire, having fellow-officers down from London, 
and behaving generally with disgusting domes- 
ticity. But these things could not go on forever, 
and John found it more bearable to wait the exe- 
cution of his plan than to agonise without one. 


226 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


I ^AUGHTER, dear,” said Forbes one after- 
A-^ noon as she was strolling up and down the 
terrace with him, met up with quite a piece of 
information in Dublin to-day.” 

Dorothy ^s face lightened. 

“Anything important?” she asked, brushing 
her cheek against one of the hands that were in 
the habit of slaying men. 

“No, no,” Forbes went on. “This ain’t a big 
important thing, although I ain’t saying its conse- 
quences wouldn’t stretch a right smart ways. I’m 
worried about how mother’s going to take it, that’s 
all.” 

‘‘Tell the story,” urged Dot. 

“All right,” said Forbes, “it runs like this: I was 
in Dublin this morning, and in that swell shopping 
street of theirs I saw a window all full of waists, 
and right in the middle there was a lovely one that 
looked as though it was made for mother. I went 
right in, and what do you suppose ? There wasn’t 
a thing in that whole darned store that wasn’t 
made of plaid. Well, a fellow dressed like an 
227 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

undertaker comes along, and I point out the waist. 
Then says he, ‘ Is there nothing else ? A necktie 
or handkerchiefs for yourself in your own plaid ?* 
‘Cut that out,’ says I. T am an American.’ 
‘For how long?’ says he. ‘Well,’ says I, ‘if it 
would help anybody any, I guess I could go a 
grandfather. Nobody ever seemed to care where 
he came from and I’d hate to tell you where I think 
he went.’ ‘Step this way,’ says the undertaker, 
and he yanks out a great big book. ‘Name of 
grandfather?’ he says, and, like a fool, I says, 
‘Donald Forbes.’ ‘Of Kirkintilloch?’ says he. 
‘Never heard that of him,’ says I, ‘but he looked 
bad enough to have it true.’ And, daughter. 
I’m a boiled bluefish if that chap didn’t turn back 
and show me the name of my grandfather, written 
down among all kinds of swells: 

‘‘ ‘ Lady Agatha married the Duke of Ki Yi. 

“‘Lady Mary married Baron Beanfeast. 

‘“Honourable Alexander married Tottie Two 
Toes. 

“‘Donald emigrated to America; further career 
unknown.’ 

“Then it gave the kids. And then that under- 
taker sold me everything in a Forbes plaid he 
228 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

had in the store. It ain’t what you’d call a pretty 
plaid, but it’s ours. So I’m having dresses made 
for you and mother” — Dot shrank visibly and he 
went on — '‘and a complete suit of kilts ” 

"Oh no, Dad,” she cried. 

" — for Pitty Pat,” said he. "The Viscount 
Glendaire, Dorothy, is also one of the Forbeses 
of Kirkinkillin.” 

" It wasn’t that before,” said his daughter. "Try 
it again, dear.” 

He tried and failed and was for the time hope- 
lessly lost. His mistakes made it impossible for 
Dorothy to remember which syllable came first 
and this descendant from Highland clans and 
glory was obliged to telephone to the "under- 
taker” for his birthright. He returned to Dot with 
his name clearly written on a card. "I’ve ordered 
a copy of that big red book. I’ll get one for you 
if you say so, and I guess Pitty Pat ought to have 
one too. He’s a Forbes of” — consulting his 
card — "of Kirkintilloch. You want to remember 
that.” 

For some half-hour or so he basked in his new 
dignity. He sent for Pitty Pat and instructed that 
youth in the pronunciation of his new title. 

"Fishes,” said Pitty Pat as one having a de- 
termined mind. 


229 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“We’ll go and feed the fishes later,” his grand- 
father promised, “ but first you must say, * I am a 
Forbes of Kirkintilloch/ ” 

“Fishes,” remarked Pitty Pat, with his eyes on 
the tree tops. “ Bwead and fishes.” 

“You sound like the Bible,” said his grand- 
father. “Got a sort of authority to it. So come 
on. We’ll feed ’em. I’ll teach you the name 
when I get strong on it myself.” 

They were thus occupied when Mrs. Forbes 
approached her two magnets, and at once she saw 
trouble in her husband’s face. He had been won- 
dering how she was going to take the discovery 
of his ancient lineage. 

“Just tell me right away, I don’t want to be 
prepared,” said she. 

“All right,” said her husband. “Here goes: 
I’m a Forbes” — with a surreptitious glance at his 
card — “of Kirkintilloch. Our blood dates back 
to the first spill that dyed the Highlands red. We 
were killed at Culloden. We were murdered on 
every mountain-side. We were in the court of 
Mary Queen of Scots. We fought with Prince 
Charlie and I hope to prove that we married Flora 
Macdonald. Oh! madam, the Forbeses of” — 
again the card — “of Kirkintilloch lie dead all up 
and down the Tales of Scottish Chivalry. Ask 
230 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

any one you like. Ask the man in Dublin. Ask 
Sir Walter Scott.’’ 

Mrs. Forbes leaned forward and possessed her- 
self of the card. ‘^Been drinking, John?” she 
asked kindly. ^‘This Irish whiskey is not as 
innocent as it looks.” 

‘‘Drinking!” snorted Forbes. “Now there’s 
the gratitude of woman.” 

He grew a little calmer, when she drew him down 
beside her, and he described the main points of his 
morning’s discoveries. 

“And you accuse me of drinking when I’ve 
spent the morning buying dress goods and a belt 
and some knitted gloves” — Mrs. Forbes quivered 
— “and some silk handkerchiefs and some ties, 
and some studs and links and lots of other fixings, 
like stockings and ribbons. Every last one of them 
made of the Forbes plaid.” 

“For me?” queried his wife. 

“Why, sure,” he answered. “If I’m a Forbes 
of — where’s that darned card — ain’t you a Mrs. 
Forbes of — ” and his wife produced the card and 
cried ecstatically, “Mrs. Forbes of Kirkintilloch. 
Oh, you darling, I can hardly wait to get into Dub- 
lin to have new cards engraved.” 

“Going to put that on them?” he asked, nod- 
ding at his ancestral title. 

231 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Why, of course!’’ she cried, and repeated 
richly, “Mrs. Forbes of Kirkintilloch.” 

“That will be the finish of every servant girl 
you hand it to,” said Forbes as he took up his 
hat. “I doubt if even a butler could worry 
through and look the same afterward.” 


232 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


S O passed several weeks. Mrs. Forbes aban- 
doned “the Palmers’’ without a sigh and began 
to study the Scotch accent. Every one was happy 
save John. The weather did its best though it 
occasionally broke out “a-sighing and a-sobbing.” 
Harrington and Pat supplied Mrs. Forbes with 
some of the wildest legends that were ever invented, 
all about giants and maidens, skeletons, scrunched 
bones and blood. When she repeated them to 
Betty Banbridge that scholarly spinster pronounced 
them utterly spurious, and offered as more suit- 
able mental food the rules of the Gaelic grammar. 

Pitty Pat and his grandmother cruised about 
beatifically. Yet Dorothy was restless. 
“Daughter,” said Forbes, “I wouldn’t.” 

“Yes you would,” said Dot. “You wouldn’t 
stand it as well as I do. Daddy, darling, I don’t 
know what I’m doing or what to think. You 
know this was never the life I expected. You re- 
member how I used to dream about having some 
big mission in the world and now it’s dwindled to 
this.” 


233 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“There’s a good deal of time in a life,” said 
Forbes, “and I don’t remember as you had any 
definite date for setting out on your crusade. You 
wait awhile. The Lord Almighty ain’t wasteful.” 

“ But I thought it had all come with Pat. And, 
dad, it did. There’s great work to be done right 
here. Lives to be made straight and happy; in- 
dustry and self-respect to be put into them. And, 
then the disease; the wretched preventable dis- 
ease. And here they chain me, dad, with all that 
going on before my eyes. And Pat laughs and 
kisses me when I protest.” 

Pat went his careless way for about another 
week and John’s plan hung fire. And then help 
miraculously came from the one person on earth 
who would have been most loath to serve him. His 
mother, Mrs. Fortescue, having passed from one 
chauffeur to another, until she found one dauntless 
of the largest policeman and contemptuous of 
the most solid traffic block, had enjoyed an all too 
brief felicity and had then participated in a smash- 
up, which resulted in the wreck of the car — an 
event which left her beyond the reach of solace — 
and of her own left hip which did not seem to 
trouble her at all. Nevertheless elderly ladies 
may not fracture hips with impunity. There 
were other less definite but more alarming in- 
234 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

juries to a tired constitution and Pat was sent 
for. 

The earl obeyed the summons with a double 
depression. He was troubled about his eccentric 
but always gallant mother, and then there was the 
celebration of Pitty Pat’s birthday, his first at 
Glendaire. It was very near. He would be al- 
most sure to miss it and Dorothy would be dis- 
appointed. He had had for some time a wretched 
feeling that Dorothy was being disappointed. 

So Pat went to London, charging John again 
and again to take care of Dorothy and Pitty Pat. 

To this end John, on the morning of the historic 
third birthday of Viscount Glendaire, rode over 
to the cottage beyond the mountain to give in- 
structions to the old woman there. 

“ I cannot tell you to the minute,” he had said, 
“but we’re to dine at eight o’clock. At about 
nine you’d better be there. You’ll have to carry 
the child and keep his face covered. Wait near 
the big door, and when you hear me say ‘Long 
life to the heir,’ you are to send the boy in: tell 
him his supper is there and that he is to go and 
eat it. Then wait on the terrace out of sight of 
the hall windows and I’ll bring him to you.” 

“And what,” she asked, “is this play-acting 
for — is it for any good V* 

235 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“ It’s for my purpose,” he answered as he turned 
to ride away. ‘‘ See that you make no mistake.” 

'‘It’s for evil,” muttered Mrs. Moran as she 
watched him. “ It’s for evil. Nothing else could 
make him look so happy.” 


236 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


P ITTY PAT was now in the enjoyment of 
three summers, a large vocabulary, numer- 
ous teeth and a devotion which, if he could have 
understood it, would have turned his golden head. 

All day long upon his birthday his well-wishers 
and his subjects came to wish him joy. All day 
long he trotted about and intrusted his tiny hand 
to the work-worn clasp of his people. All day 
long he accepted their congratulations and their 
tight bouquets of hard mangolds and rosebuds, 
and when evening fell there was still to be a great 
dinner in the hall — the first at which he had ever 
been present and over which, in the absence of the 
earl, his father, he was to preside. There were 
to be no guests. The household would be, John 
had predicted, tired enough of strangers before 
night. 

The Viscount Glendaire presided with great 
dignity over the oysters and the soup. James 
had arrayed him in a smock of embroidered linen 
for whose authenticity in material, design and 
workmanship Betty Banbridge stood sponsor. 

237 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“All cottage work,’’ she had assured Dot, before 
mentioning a price which staggered even that ex- 
perienced shopper. He looked very small in his 
father’s great arm-chair of carved black oak, and 
the footmen who were his slaves were obliged to 
build him into it with crimson cushions. He en- 
joyed the position for a time because his grand- 
mother sat at his right hand and Jarvis Burke at 
his left, and with either or both of them he was 
always happy and generally spoiled. 

But to-night he behaved admirably. Across 
a mass of flowers and golden plate he could see 
his mother, his grandfather and his uncle John. 
The table was bright with candles but all the rest 
of the great hall was in mysterious shadows. The 
servants vanished into it and reappeared with a 
charming effect of being quite newly made. The 
golden fleur-de-lys on the crimson hangings winked 
at him and through the great door he could see the 
sweet young night and a single silver star. 

Presently even the mysteries of late dinner be- 
gan to pall and he became restless and sleepy. 
The butler rallied him with some sweets and 
whispered the promise of ices to follow, but his 
little lordship was not to be bribed and so was re- 
moved from the chair of honour and tucked into 
the empty one beside his mother, the chair that 
238 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

was always waiting for the unknown guest. Din- 
ner progressed as dinners will until at last the cloth 
was removed and it was nearly time for the ladies 
to withdraw. 

^‘But first,” protested Gresham, ‘‘we must cel- 
ebrate the occasion. Are all the glasses filled ? 
Then let us drink.” And he rose to his feet: 
“Long life to the heir.” There was a little sound 
behind him in the gloom near the open door. 
“Long life to the heir,’’ he repeated. “Long 
life,” they all echoed; and into the circle of candle 
light stepped a little boy in a frock as blue as his 
eyes, a halo of gold round his head. 

“Good God,” cried Gresham and dropped into 
his chair. Every one turned to watch the approach- 
ing figure. It was Pitty Pat. And yet there was 
Pitty Pat beside his mother, not sleepy now but 
wide awake and eager. The child came unhesi- 
tatingly out of the shadow and climbed into the 
empty chair at the head of the table. No one 
spoke after John’s exclamation. The butler after 
one perturbed glance herded the footmen before 
him and left the “quality” to deal with their own 
mysteries. 

Pitty Pat slipped out of his chair and went to 
greet the guest. He had been greeting all day 
and he was getting to do it with an easy grace. 

239 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Mr. and Mrs. Forbes stared, and the Hon. John 
Gresham turned a ghastly face upon his sister-in- 
law. He felt ghastly. He belonged to a race of 
gentlemen. 

“There is nothing,” said he, “that Pat would 
not have done to prevent this.” 

“Pat?” repeated Dorothy. 

“Yes, Pat, my unfortunate brother. If you 
can avoid understanding, then for God’s sake 
don’t understand.” 

Dot’s eyes returned to the children. Pitty Pat 
was piling raisins and cakes upon the stranger’s 
plate. They were both laughing. Mrs. Forbes, 
who was nearest to them, was staring stupidly. 
Forbes had aged ten years during the last five 
minutes. Jarvis Burke rose and left the room. 
To the last his eyes were fixed on the Countess 
of Glamoran and she never noticed that he was 
gone. John too kept his eyes on Dot. 

“I do not believe you,” she said at last. 

“Don’t,” he implored. “Don’t believe any- 
thing, not your eyes, not what any one says to you, 
not any rumours which may have reached you. 
Believe nothing, except that Pat adores you, and 
that this child — this wretched, miserable child — 
is more than a year older than yours. It was all 
over long ago. Believe nothing but that, and 
240 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

forget even that if you can. The child has been 
kept out of your path ever since you came and 
shall be again.’’ He rose and went toward the 
head of the table; but Dorothy was quicker. She 
reached the children first. 

‘‘Stop,” she commanded. “Don’t touch him. 
You’re quite wrong to think that I wasn’t in Pat’s 
confidence. Father, mother, I have known it all 
along. This child’s place is here. I propose to 
keep him — always, if Pat so desires, but certainly 
until his — until my husband comes home again.” 

“But you cannot do that,” cried John. “You 
mustn’t, really. I don’t know what Pat would 
say to me if I let such a thing occur. The child 
must go back to those who are responsible for 
him.” 

“The child shall stay,” said Dorothy. “I have 
told you there are no secrets between Pat and me, 
and there shall be none. The child shall stay, I 
tell you, here in the house of his people.” 

“Daughter, dear,” said Forbes, standing up and 
taking her in his arms, “you’re a noble woman and 
I’m proud of you.” 

This was a complication upon which John had 
never counted, and which brought ruin and dis- 
aster nearer than they had ever been. 

“I tell you,” he broke out, “that you can’t do 
241 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

this thing, you sha’n’t do this thing. I shall re- 
move that child, by force if necessary, before Pat’s 
return.” 

^‘And I tell you, John,” said Dot steadily, 
‘‘that I am mistress here; I choose to keep the 
child. Mother, dear, might I trouble you to at- 
tend to the arrangements in the nursery.? Will 
you take the children with you and go now ?” 

And when Mrs. Forbes withdrew with the chil- 
dren, Dorothy turned to her father. 

“Dad,” she whispered, “dear old Dad, it’s 
awful that you and mother should have been here. 
It ruins your visit utterly, I know, but you won’t 
mind when you think what it would have been if 
I had been alone. You and John will forgive me 
if I leave you for a while; I want to think.” 

Again she looked straight at John, and again 
she told her loyal lie. “It is not,” said she — “you 
see, it is not as though I had been quite unpre- 
pared. As I told you at first, there have never 
been any secrets between me and my husband.” 
And so she left them. 


242 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


J OHN immediately fell to excusing and palliat- 
ing his brother’s offence and all his excuses 
made it seem only the darker and the more in- 
tolerable. Forbes lighted a thick cigar and sat 
silent in his place at the deserted table. The at- 
tention he bestowed on John was not great. Never 
in his experience of her had he known Dot to tell 
a lie, but there had been something in her startled 
eyes and stricken face which made him doubt that 
she had expected this particular unexpected guest. 
When she had turned away, her slender body had 
shown none of its customary strength or elasticity. 
She had passed out into the evening a sorrow-laden 
broken woman. 

The other hypothesis was equally incredible — 
that he, John Forbes, with all his experience of 
men, could have intrusted the dearest thing he 
possessed to a scoundrel. 

"‘He never meant her to know,” John was ex- 
plaining. “We had nearly completed arrange- 
ments for sending the child and his grandmother 
to Australia, and now I suppose — since you know 
243 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

the truth — you will be taking your daughter away 
from us, thinking, rightly enough, that we’re not 
worthy of her. I know that Pat will be guided en- 
tirely by Dorothy’s wishes.” Forbes still smoked. 
John watched him haggardly for a moment, and 
then went on again: 

‘‘There was a case something like this in Dublin 
a year or two ago. The wife went straight home 
to her people in New York, and all the arrange- 
ments were made by letter. I suppose the poor 
girl felt that an interview — after all happiness 
and confidence had been destroyed — would have 
been too trying. I’ve always felt that you wanted 
to take Dorothy back with you, but I never ex- 
pected that you would have this unanswerable 
reason.” 

Forbes rose. “Young man,” said he, “would 
you oblige me by shutting up. I’ve got some- 
thing to think of.” John left him striding up 
and down the hall, a spectre when he passed out 
of the candles’ light, but a strong, dependable, 
level-headed man when he came into their soft 
glow. 

John went out to break to Mrs. Moran as best 
he could the tidings that the boy was to be taken 
from her. Her reception of the news surprised 
him. He had expected wailings and pleadings, 
244 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

but the old woman listened to him in silence and 
when he had finished looked at him still in silence. 

‘‘Well/’ cried John testily, “say what you have 
to say and go.” 

“I have this to say,” she answered. “May 
God curse you and torment you as you have cursed 
and tormented me and mine.” 

“I care nothing for your curses,” said John. 
“This whole country side has been cursing me for 
years, and I’m none the worse for it. But if I 
ever find you on the place again. I’ll get you 
hanged, Margaret Moran, or deported. So now 
good night to you. Here, turn this way, go along 
the terrace there and you’ll come to a little path 
that brings you out on the avenue. Go quietly.” 


245 


CHAPTER XL 


M rs. MORAN intended to obey these in- 
junctions, but fate threw in her path a 
temptation too strong to be resisted. Hurrying 
along the terrace she almost ran into the arms of 
the young Countess of Glamoran, who, with bent 
head and trailing white dress, was pacing up and 
down in the faint starlight. Here was a chance 
which all the empty years before her might never 
bring again. 

‘‘My lady,” she began. “Oh, my lady.” 

The white figure turned. Diamonds glittered 
in her hair, on her hands and among the laces on 
her breast. 

“Yes.?” answered the countess absently. “Is 
there anything I can do for you?” 

“Oh, my lady, my lady,” she repeated. “Give 
him back to me.” 

“Him ?” repeated Dorothy — “him ?” 

“Michael, my lady, Michael — the little boy. 
He’s me grandson, your ladyship, and the only 
one in the world I have left to me now, and Mr. 
Gresham is after telling me that you’re going to 
246 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

take him away from me. But oh! me lady, 
sure you won’t do that. He’s all I have in the 
world, and you have a child of your own and a 
husband of your own.” 

‘‘Then,” said Dorothy, seeing that here she 
might find an answer to some or her most agonis- 
ing questions — “then the child’s mother is dead ?” 

“Oh, yes, your ladyship.” 

“When did she die.?” 

“Four years ago come June, my lady.” 

Dot pondered. Four years ago in June Pat 
had come to Edgecombe. All through that month 
of romantic, happy courtship the girl lay dying. 
To believe this old woman would be to believe 
her husband a monster. He had been making 
gentle, tender, laughing love to her while the poor 
deserted mother of his child was dying. 

“It was a bad day for Mary,” Mrs. Moran 
went on, “that ever she came to the castle. But 
Mrs. O’Leary spotted her in the chapel and took 
a fancy to her face, thinking she looked clever and 
teachable. And oh! me lady, she was both. A 
little thing she was, not near so tall as your lady- 
ship, but oh ! the pretty face of her and the soft 
little voice! She had little hands, too, almost 
like a lady’s, for I never let her do the hard work. 
She seemed too little and weak for that, and I was 


247 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

always strong. Signs on, here am I alive and 
strong still, God help me! as far off from death as 
ever! And her lying under the sod. And noth- 
ing left to me of her but the child you’re taking 
away from me, and the little bits of jewellery the 
landlady gave me at the end.” 

“What landlady ?” asked Dorothy. 

“Up in Dublin, your ladyship. He took her to 
an elegant house. She had lodgings like a queen. 
’Twas there the child was born, and it was there 
they let me see her at the end when all was over. 
He wasn’t there himself when I came, but the 
landlady, a good woman, God bless her! told me 
something of how happy Mary had been there, 
and she gave me the child — he was a big bit of 
a boy then — and the brooch she used to wear and 
a chain and two rings besides the wedding ring. 
That’s all, me lady. That’s all I have for all the 
years I loved her, and I’m still strong, your lady- 
ship, and still far from me rest.” 

“But don’t you understand,” said Dorothy, 
speaking connectedly for the first time, “that 
neither you nor I have any choice. We must do 
what is right and best for the child. His father’s 
son should live in his father’s house. You know 
that. You must know it. He must be educated, 
sent to school. He must have all sorts of things 
248 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

which you could never give him, but which you 
would always want for him. If I gave him to you 
now and you took him back to poverty and care, 
you would be doing a selfish thing and you’re 
not a selfish woman. You’d regret it as long as 
you lived. Don’t you see that you would ?” 

But oh, me lady,” cried the old woman, think- 
ing of the desolate days and the lonely nights be- 
fore her. ‘‘You don’t understand. There’s no 
one to work for now. Nothing to hope for.” 

“ I do think of that,” said Dorothy, “ I do under- 
stand. And with all my heart. I’m sorry. But 
you could not be with him always. You say you 
are very strong, and indeed you seem so, but you’d 
have to leave him some time, and you’d have to 
leave him poor. Let me keep him now, and you’ll 
never have to fear that he will suffer want. And 
oh! believe me. I’m not taking him from you 
entirely; you can always come and see him when 
you will.” 

“ I will not come,” said the old woman proudly, 
after some thought. “I told your ladyship I had 
strength, and so I have. What would the gentle- 
man you’re going to make of him be doing with a 
grandmother like me ? I have done me duty by 
him ever since he was given to me, and I’ll do that 
last duty now. I beg your ladyship’s pardon for 
249 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

keeping you so long and bothering you with my 
troubles. Til be getting back now. But will you 
tell me what room you’re going to put him in ? 
Which will be his window? Maybe Fll see a 
light shining in it of a night. And will you tell 
them that has the charge of him, that he’ll do noth- 
ing for fear — he doesn’t know what fear is — and 
everything for love. And he likes milk on his 
potatoes when they’re hot; and don’t let him have 
his tea too strong. I always knew the time would 
come when he’d be taken from me. I’m not fit 
to bring up the likes of him, and I’m glad it’s you 
that has him, for you’re a kind and a lovely lady, 
and I know you’ll be good to the child.” 

“I will,” cried Dorothy earnestly. ‘‘Indeed, 
indeed, you can trust me.” 

“ I do,” said Mrs. Moran. “ I trust you. Show 
me the window now and let me go.” 

Dorothy pointed it out to her and they parted. 
Then she resumed her restless pacing and her 
miserable thinking. Pat, her Pat, a widower with 
a child. He who had seemed the very person- 
ification of frankness had kept this secret all 
the time. Suddenly a new thought struck her. 
Michael, not Pitty Pat, was the heir, the viscount. 
And quick upon this came another — the memory 
of the afternoon when Pitty Pat was five hours 
250 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

old and Pat had been allowed to sit beside her. 
“What shall we call him V* she had asked. 
“What name would you choose?’’ 

“We have no choice,” Pat had answered^ “no 
choice at all, beloved. The eldest son of the Earl 
of Glamoran brings his name with him — that 
young person in the next room is Patrick Gresham, 
Viscount Glendaire.” She could remember the 
pride and love with which he spoke and the 
pride and love with which she listened to him. 
Yet all the time — oh, it would not bear thinking 
of. She turned and went back to the house. In 
the hall the red-shaded lamps had been lighted. 
Everything was peaceful, orderly and dignified 
and the butler, bearing a decanter of whiskey and 
a glass on a silver tray, was knocking at the door 
of the oak room. Sometimes a miserable mind 
will seize upon some irrelevant thought, and 
Dot wondered dully whether some belated tenant 
were closeted with John. Young Burke, she knew, 
never drank, and Pat had told her of the physi- 
cian’s decree that, for John, alcohol was fatal; 
intoxication, suicide. The butler waited. John 
admitted him, and Dorothy saw that her brother- 
in-law was alone. 

She spent her first sleepless night in her hus- 
band’s empty room. 

251 


CHAPTER XLI 


M rs. FORBES had never enjoyed anything 
so much as this visit to her distinguished 
relatives, the Earl and Countess of Glamoran and 
their son, Viscount Glendaire. It was thus that 
she always thought of them, never in the familiar 
terms of Dot and Pat and Pitty Pat. The state- 
liness of life at Glendaire delighted her. She 
dressed indefatigably, took quite enthusiastically 
to the services of the maid allotted to her and gen- 
erally proved to herself and to her husband that 
she was a Palmer. 

'‘IPs great!” John Forbes would enthusiasti- 
cally remark. “That Palmer blood is great.” 

She conceived an admiring friendship for Mrs. 
O’Leary, that master-mind which could, and did, 
grapple with the intricacies of the domestic econ- 
omy of so large a house. 

Mrs. O’Leary reciprocated this admiration, and 
the two matrons spent many happy hours in the 
exchange of household hints and recipes. Mrs. 
Forbes never tired of expatiating upon the merits 
of The House at Edgecombe, and she drew up 
252 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

amazing plans for its development and extension. 
Her other delights were the wearing of her elabo- 
rate costumes, shopping expeditions to Dublin, 
the society of Pitty Pat and the entertainment 
of numerous guests whom chance and etiquette 
brought to Glendaire. Hospitality had always 
been her talent and The House had never offered 
her such opportunities for its exercise as she found 
in Ireland. 

She was so happy in all these innocent diversions 
that her husband, both for her own sake and for 
Dot’s, affected to think lightly of the tragedy 
which ended Pitty Pat’s birthday celebration. 

'‘You see, Anne,” he explained to her the next 
morning — "you see, we don’t rightly understand 
this thing, and we’ve just got to wait until Pat 
comes home and explains it. I don’t altogether 
trust that John Gresham. I don’t know just what 
his game is, but I do know he’s got a game of some 
kind. If he tries to talk to you about this kid, 
you just turn him over to me, will you ?” 

"Why, of course I will, but I guess I won’t have 
to. He hasn’t said more than six words to me 
since I came, and he’s not likely to get talkative all 
at once. Of course it’s uncharitable to hate a fel- 
low-creature — especially a sick one — but I do feel 
as though I could hate John Gresham.” 

253 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Yes/’ answered her husband. “Yes, it does 
seem as though he took a sort of advantage of us 
by being an epileptic. You can’t treat him as 
you would an ordinary man. If you do, he can 
always shut you up by throwing a fit. That sort 
of puts you in the wrong. It’s unanswerable; you 
can’t argue with him after that.” 

“I should say not; if he did it to me, I’d get a 
fit too.” 

“Well,” said her husband, “I guess we’re agreed 
about him. Now I want to talk to you about Dot. 
Don’t you think it would be better for us not to 
bother her about this ? You see, it ain’t as though 
we could help her. We don’t know the first thing 
about it. Now if you and I seem as though we 
didn’t attach much importance to it, don’t you 
think that might help her to feel a little the same 
way ?” 

“Perhaps so,” said Mrs. Forbes reluctantly. 
She had been looking forward to a nice, tearful, 
heroic morning with Dot. She had prepared sev- 
eral maxims and several widely varying opinions 
to share her with daughter, and this proposition 
put that out of the question. 

“Of course, you’re right,” she acquiesced; “we 
don’t know anything. Yet a woman’s sympathy, 
John ” 


254 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

‘‘I know, dearie, I know,’’ said her husband, 
‘‘there’s nothing like it in the world. Your sym- 
pathy has been my strength lots and lots of times, 
but what Dot needs is bracing. You will be 
guided by me, won’t you, dear ? and promise not 
to talk to her about it unless she begins. She 
said last night that she was sorry it should have 
happened now and spoiled your visit. What you 
want to do is to show her that your visit ain’t 
spoiled. The poor child has worries enough with- 
out worrying about us. You think it over and 
see if I ain’t right.” 

“I know you are,” she answered, “without any 
thinking at all.” 

The morning gave her every opportunity to 
follow her husband’s advice. Dorothy break- 
fasted — or pretended to breakfast — in her own 
room and when, later in the morning, her mother 
found her in the nursery they met in the restrain- 
ing presence of servants. Little Michael was 
already upon terms of intimacy with every one, 
and though he occasionally set out in search of 
his grandmother, his conduct under the circum- 
stances was admirable. Dorothy had sought the 
children with some faint hope that the daylight 
might show the likeness between them to be less 
marked, but it was even more unmistakable than 

25s 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

had been at first apparent. She watched them 
playing together. She listened to the marvelling 
of Pitty Pat’s unsuspicious American nurse, a 
consistent democrat who, scorning titles, still ad- 
dressed her as Miss Dorothy. She was naturally 
puzzled by her new charge, but she accepted him 
without question or suspicion. am sure. Miss 
Dorothy,” said she now, “that it’s a very good 
idea to have a companion for Pitty Pat. Are you 
thinking of adopting him permanently ? ” 

“Yes,” answered Dorothy, “I am thinking of it.” 
She thought of nothing else. She wandered out 
in the garden and back to luncheon in a maze of 
unhappiness, loneliness and misery. 

Once, long ages ago, she had told Pat that she 
was ready to face the cruelty of the world, and he 
had laughed and assured her that she would find 
the world always kind. She had come to believe 
in that old prophecy of his and yet she had always 
held herself ready to pay for her happy youth 
with a sorrowful maturity. But she had never 
supposed that sorrow could be like this. She had 
imagined it as at its worst, the loss by death of 
some one she loved : at its least, the loss of health 
or money. But always she had thought of it as 
something to be borne proudly and openly before 
all men. She had never bargained to bear shame. 

256 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

There was nothing in her philosophy, her religion 
or her experience which could help her now. Even 
her father, her wise, old, patient daddy, could do 
nothing to lessen her torment. And her husband, 
her chivalrous, adoring and adored Pat, would be 
even more helpless to comfort her. She had re- 
ceived a letter from him that morning — a letter so 
like his cheery, confident, loving self that it had 
increased her misery a thousand-fold. 

“Fll never leave you again,” he had written, 
^‘especially Til never stay with the mater without 
you again. She devotes all her time to convincing 
me that Pm not half good enough for you. I 
agree with her entirely, but I know your blessed 
eyes will never see it, so what difference can it 
make ^ 

“ Pm not sure when I shall be able to get back. 
Soon, I hope, for I tell you that without^ou and 
without James I am like a lost soul. Funny, 
wasn’t it, his practically refusing to come with me. 
It was all nonsense his having rheumatism and 
inducing me to take Thomas on that account. 
He was up to some dodge of his own. I wonder 
what it was ^ ” 

Dot at the time had wondered too, but now 
there was no room in her mind for anything but 
unhappiness. She wandered back to the house and 

257 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

presided at the luncheon hour. John Gresham 
had not left his room, and the other three, the 
Forbeses and Jarvis Burke, did their devoted 
best to seem placid and normal. Jarvis Burke 
and Mrs. Forbes had understood one another 
from the first. She was quite accustomed to com- 
fort helpless admirers of her daughter’s, and she 
easily recognised Jarvis as one of these. He had 
constituted himself as her particular guide and 
knight, and as he was well versed in all the lore 
and fable of the neighbourhood, she could not 
have had a better companion for her drives and 
walks. 

‘‘This afternoon,” said he, “we’ll go, if you 
would care to, to the Fairies’ Pool. It isn’t a very 
long walk and I know you’ll be interested in it. 
It’s the prettiest spot! Its only drawback is its 
notoriety. People come from far and near to see 
it. There is nothing to be said against that, but 
I do object to their throwing sandwiches and bis- 
cuit boxes into it. However the tourist season is 
nearly over and we might be able to catch it at a 
quiet moment.” 

“Of course I’ll go,” cried Mrs. Forbes. “Dor- 
othy, dear,” she went on, turning to the silent 
figure at the head of the table, “do you think you’d 
care to come with us?” Dorothy looked at her 

258 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

blankly; the conversation, maintained entirely for 
her benefit, had not reached her. 

“Her ladyship,’’ said Jarvis, “has been there 
often. I fear she wouldn’t care for it again.” And 
Dorothy turned grateful eyes upon him. 

“If you don’t mind,” she acquiesced, “I think 
I’ll stay at home.” 

So Mrs. Forbes and her cavalier set off for the 
Fairies’ Pool, and Dorothy and her father were 
left alone at the castle. John Gresham remained 
invisible and Forbes was grateful to whatever held 
him. But he was not grateful — but rather the 
reverse — to a frightened little Frenchman, John’s 
long-suffering valet, who, in the middle of the after- 
noon, demanded speech with him. 

The man lived in a state of vague terror. Forbes 
had often noticed that and had laughed about it 
with Pat. But to-day his terror was sharp, insist- 
ent. He demanded a physician. He would him- 
self send for one except that he was authorised to 
do so only upon certain conditions. These con- 
ditions did not then obtain, but a state of things 
as bad, even worse, existed and somebody in au- 
thority must send for a physician for his master. 

“It will be that he will, being better, kill me,” 
remarked the little man resignedly. “He will 
kill me that I have told you.” 

259 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“But you haven’t told me anything,” Forbes 
pointed out. 

Ah, well, monsieur was to understand that he, 
Pierre, would no longer be responsible. Since 
dinner on the night preceding. Monsieur Gresham 
had eaten nothing and had drunk of whiskey 
three quarts. 

“Three quarts!” repeated Forbes. 

Ah, yes, Pierre agreed. Monsieur was no doubt 
surprised. He himself was also surprised. If 
monsieur wanted confirmation of those words he 
need only apply to the butler. The butler, being 
produced, corroborated these statistics, and fur- 
ther contributed the information that Mr. John, 
save for a glass of claret at dinner time, had never 
been known to touch anything at all. The physi- 
cian’s orders, so the butler had always understood, 
had been strictly non-alcoholic. 

“And now,” said Forbes, “he’s drunk three 
quarts in eighteen hours. He’s doing pretty well 
for a beginner. What sort of shape is he in?” 
he demanded of the flustered Pierre, who, having 
painfully arrived at an understanding of the ques- 
tion, broke out: 

But that was of all things the most extraordi- 
nary, alarming. Monsieur Gresham was as he 
had always been. Oh, yes! he was silent, but 
260 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

then, when was he not silent save when he was 
cursing? He could still curse. On that point 
Pierre had within the hour been reassured. Also 
he could walk. He had gone three times out upon 
the little balcony from which he could survey the 
so beautiful park and country. It was this which 
most alarmed Pierre. This calm! In convulsions, 
in unconsciousness, Pierre knew what to do. Oh, 
yes, there were the straps upon the bed, there was 
the little needle and the morphine, but this — this 
was something different — beyond reach of straps 
and morphine — beyond the experience of Pierre. 
A doctor must be called. 

“Who had we better send for?’’ said Forbes to 
the butler. “You know their names, I suppose.” 

“You’d better send,” was the butler’s opinion, 
“for the one you have a grudge against, or one 
that’s old enough to die, for it’s my opinion — and I 
have known Mr. John for a good while — that he’ll 
kill any one that goes near him. There’s nothing 
to do but to give him all the drink he wants until it 
takes some sort of effect upon him. Then, when 
he’s unconscious, some one can go near him.” 

“I’ll go up and take a look at him myself,” 
decided Forbes. “In Lord Gresham’s absence I 
suppose it’s up to me to keep an eye on things. 
Don’t let her ladyship hear anything about this,” 
261 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

he warned the man. ^‘We can get along without 
bothering her/’ 

The men withdrew and Forbes went in search 
of his daughter. ‘‘It’s a lucky thing,” he reflected, 
as he saw her guarding Pitty Pat while that phil- 
anthropist fed the swans on the lake at the bottom 
of the terrace, “it’s a lucky thing that I’m here.” 


262 


CHAPTER XLII 



ORBES strolled down to join his daughter 


A and her son. He intended to discuss John 
Gresham with her in terms both general and 
vague, and to draw from her such information 
as she possessed as to his disease. Pitty Pat 
greeted him rapturously and perched, clammy but 
happy, upon his shoulder. Dot greeted him more 
quietly but not less gladly, and again he reflected 
that Glendaire was a good place at which to be 
at that particular juncture. Dorothy was easily 
led to tell him all she knew of John’s malady 
and its history. 

“Pm a little worried about him,” she ended, 
'‘because, last night, I saw Maloney carrying 
whiskey to his room; he is strictly forbidden to 
drink. I wish so much,” she sighed, “that Pat 
were here. Pat is the only one who can manage 
him at all.” 

“Oh! he’ll be back in a day or two,” said Forbes 
genially. “I guess we can get along till then.” 

“I am afraid it must seem a little bit dull to 
you,” said Dot gently. “I wish there were more 
for you to do.” 


263 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“But there’s lots,” Forbes assured her — “lots. 
Fm busy all the time learning things. I’m learn- 
ing leisure and how to be a member of the aris- 
tocracy and little frills of that sort. And I’ll tell 
you a secret, daughter, if you’ll promise not to 
laugh.” 

Dot promised, and her face as she did so nearly 
broke his heart. Nevertheless he went on. 

“I’m taking up a new accomplishment. I 
picked out a good strong groom and he picked out 
a good strong horse, and about five o’clock every 
morning, while all the rest of you are asleep, or 
ought to be, I take a lesson in horseback riding. 
Of course in a way it’s a toss up whether the 
groom or the horse or your daddy will come out 
ahead, but we’re all strong, and I hope we’ll live 
through it. But you can think I get enough exer- 
cise in the morning to last me through the day, 
and that I don’t hanker after anything very ex- 
citing. No, daughter, dear, don’t you fret; I’m 
having the time of my life and I know mother’s 
having the time of her life, too. We’ll let her do 
a little bit of entertaining when Pat gets back, and 
that will fix her right up. Jerusalem!” he ended, 
“what’s happening?” 

Dorothy turned with him and beheld the trans- 
formation of her quiet, brooding Elizabethan home 
264 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

into a picnic ground. Tourists broke out like a 
rash upon the driveway. They surged through 
the open door, they swirled round corners and 
they called to one another in shrill admiration 
of everything within their range of vision; jaunting 
cars, brakes, landaus and waggonettes drove up 
and deposited further contributions to the noise, to 
the confusion and to the amazement of Dorothy 
and her father. 

“What can it be they marvelled, and then as 
they descried the figure of Mrs. Forbes, animated, 
executive, and — as they discerned even from that 
distance — in a paroxysm of hospitality, Forbes 
understood. 

“IFs mother,” he laughed. “By the blessed 
gum tree, it’s mother entertaining! I’d know 
that reception-committee walk of hers a mile 
away. But say, daughter, this is going to spoil 
her for Edgecombe. I never could provide such 
a chunk of company as she’s got now.” 

“But where did she get them ?” marvelled Dot. 
“And what are they?” 

“Company,” her father answered. “That’s 
enough for mother. Ah 1 here comes Burke. 
He’ll be able to tell us what it’s all about.” 

Forbes’s surmise had been correct. The figures 
which hurried from point to point of interest were 
265 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

indeed guests. Mrs. Forbes had met them at the 
Fairies’ Pool. They were American ladies, that 
was all Burke knew, and Mrs. Forbes had invited 
them to the castle. 

“But she can’t know them all,” expostulated 
Dot. “How many of them are there?” 

“About fifty,” Burke answered. “They are a 
verse or a chapter or something; I can’t quite 
catch of what.” 

“What did I tell you, daughter?” demanded 
Forbes. “You see, it’s just as I said. Mother 
has broken out again, and she’s entertaining a 
travelling chapter of one of her societies. Do 
they look,” he questioned Burke, “like Daughters 
of the Revolution ?” 

“They do not,” laughed that young iconoclast. 
“They look more like its mothers and grand- 
mothers.” 

“Then it’s the Pilgrim Mothers,” Forbes de- 
cided. “We have had them at our house,” he 
explained to Jarvis, “by ones and twos. But 
fifty! Well, I guess this is just about the happiest 
day mother ever had. We’d better go up and 
help her, daughter.” 

“I was to request you to do so,” said Burke; 
“ and most especially I was to ask you to bring her 
grandson, the Viscount Glendaire.” 

266 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“All right,” said Forbes genially. “We’ll go. 
Mother must have her viscount to show off; and, 
by George, honeybunch, you’re a countess, I quite 
forgot that. Just think what an afternoon she 
has ahead of her! Fifty times she will be able 
to say, ‘My daughter, the Countess of Glamoran, 
and my grandson. Viscount Glendaire.’ We’d 
better have some cracked ice ready to put on her 
head when it’s all over. But maybe it will keep 
her steady to have to say, ‘My husband. Mister 
Forbes!’ ” 

Forbes’s surmise had been correct. Never had 
his wife been so illuminated with pride as she was 
that afternoon, and Mrs. O’Leary, so long cut off 
from the open-handed hospitality of the old earl’s 
time, was no less delighted. She had often des- 
canted upon her power to meet unexpected de- 
mands for provender, and now she had an oppor- 
tunity of proving it. Half an hour after the arrival 
of the first detachment of the chapter of the 
Daughters of the Revolution, an elaborate colla- 
tion was served in a marquee which had mean- 
while sprung up upon the lawn near the prophetic 
yew. Forbes, Jarvis Burke, Pitty Pat and the 
countess did all that could be expected of them, 
and the sounds of revelry were so loud and shrill 
that they penetrated even John Gresham’s gloom, 
267 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

and brought that lowering personage upon the 
scene. But the Daughters, having a live count- 
ess and viscount to talk to, wasted scant time 
and courtesy upon a mere honourable, and the 
courtesy which he bestowed on them was even 
scantier. 

'‘You see,’’ said he, drawing Burke aside, 
“what I told you was quite true. These are “The 
Vulgarian’s” people. She’ll grow like them in a 
few years.” 

“She could do very much worse,” said Jarvis 
stoutly. “Some of these strangers are charming. 
It’s only a very small minority that’s making all the 
noise.” 

“Oh, well,” said Gresham. “You’re preju- 
diced, of course.” 

“We both are,” retorted Jarvis. 

Mr. Forbes detached himself from his compa- 
triots and crossed to the other two men. He had 
been watching Gresham closely, and he could see 
no difference in his manner or bearing. At first 
Forbes had dreaded some outbreak, but John was 
as cool and as disagreeable as ever. It was im- 
possible, thought the older man, that the servants 
had told the truth, and yet when John presently 
left them and went into the house, Jarvis turned 
to the older man with the same story. 

268 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“He’s gone to get a drink,” said he. “He’s on 
the fourth quart since last night. Did you ever 
see anything like the way he stands it? Not a 
thing to eat, mind you, not as much as a piece of 
toast. I wish his lordship was here.” 

“Well,” said Forbes, “I think it’s about time he 
was here.” Being a man of action he presently 
strolled down to the village and sent a telegram 
to London. The youth who presided over the 
telegraph office, which was also the post-office, 
the bakery and the stationer’s, was of a furtive 
eye and a nervous manner. Forbes had noticed 
these characteristics before. When he had read 
the telegram, he seemed to the observant Forbes to 
grow yet more furtive and more nervous. 

“Anything the matter with it?” Forbes asked. 

“No! Oh, no!” answered the youth. 

“Then see that you send it, and have it marked 
‘rush’!” Forbes commanded. But when he re- 
turned to the squalid village street he looked very 
thoughtful. 

“I don’t like that boy’s eye,” he decided, as he 
listened in vain for the click of the transmitter. 
“I certainly don’t like his eye.” 

Still thoughtful he mounted the hill and went 
in search of his friend the big groom. 

“Put a horse to the dog-cart,” he commanded. 

269 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Fm going to take her ladyship for a little 
turn.” 

“But why?” asked Dot, when he told her to 
make ready. She had set her heart on a quiet 
hour in a darkened room. For to entertain and 
to bid farewell to fifty voluble strangers had been 
a severe tax upon her unhappiness. 

“Because you’re tired, honeybunch; it will do 
you good. You know you always went riding 
with daddy when he went on business, and Fm 
going on business now.” 

Dorothy abandoned the rest cure and sent for 
her driving coat and a hat, and as her father’s 
companionship lightened her sorrow she reflected 
that his business could not have been very urgent 
or absorbing, for they meandered among lanes 
and hedgerows until they came to the nearest little 
town. They drew up in front of another com- 
bination of post-office, sweet-shop, telegraph office 
and butcher’s. 

“Mother is all out of illustrated post-cards,” 
said Forbes casually. “You don’t mind holding 
the horse a minute while I go in and buy her some. 
They’ve got great ones in this store.” 

At about the time that the Earl of Glamoran 
in London was thinking of going home to his 
mother’s flat to dress for dinner, the furtive-eyed 
270 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

young man from Bally creel post-office was shown 
into the oak room at Glendaire. 

‘‘I was to show you, sir,” said he to ‘‘the 
master,” ^‘any telegram from the castle before I 
sent it on to Dublin. Her ladyship’s father is 
after giving me this,” and he laid Forbes’s clearly 
written message upon the table. ‘‘Will I be send- 
in’ it?” 

“Come home — Forbes,” was all it said. Under 
the circumstances it seemed enough, and even 
too much, to Gresham. He tore the telegraph 
form into small pieces, and then dropped them 
into the fire. 

“Then I’m not to send it, sir?” asked the fur- 
tive boy. He was good at deductions. 

“Send this instead,” said John: and he wrote: 
“All well and happy here.” Unfortunately, how- 
ever, for the plans of that gentleman, Forbes had 
taken the precaution to repeat his message from 
the post-office and telegraph station in which he 
had bought his wife’s post-cards. He had, as he 
had said to himself, disliked the eye of the furtive 
boy. 

Pat was out when the telegrams arrived and 
Mrs. Fortescue, whose hip did not in the least 
interfere with her healthy interest in other people’s 
affairs, opened both of them. She pondered over 
271 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

them for a long time and then undid the good she 
had unconsciously performed. For when Pat 
came in she gave him Forbes’s telegram and her 
blessing. 

“I cannot make it to-night,” said Pat; ‘‘it’s too 
late now, but I’ll be with them before to-morrow 
evening.” 


272 


CHAPTER XLIII 


T he next day broke dark and lowering over 
Glendaire. Mrs. Forbes, cheered by yes- 
terday’s triumph of hospitality, persisted in re- 
garding the dreary downpour as “the clearing 
shower” for which she had been watching ever 
since her arrival in Ireland. It made all plans 
for the day impossible, but every one in the house- 
hold, save only Mrs. Forbes, was too unhappy to 
care much what the weather might be. Dorothy 
was not growing in the least resigned to her heart- 
break, and Forbes was still silently but desperately 
worried. 

John, still on his diet of whiskey, supplemented 
now by morphine, would have been a dangerous 
member of any household. Jarvis Burke was 
miserable because his liege lady was so. He felt 
that John was responsible and hated and watched 
him accordingly. It was he who warned Forbes 
of the morphine. “The medico from Dublin gave 
it to him,” he explained. “He seemed so sensible 
and so unlikely to contract the habit that he trusted 
him with the whole kit: syringe, tablets and all. 

273 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Mr. Gresham has had them for years. He’s been 
able several times to ward off attacks when he 
felt premonitory symptoms. But now he’s taking 
it outrageously. Pierre says he’s had five or six 
injections since last night. And still nothing 
but that abominable whiskey. Now, if he dis- 
covers that we suspect what he’s doing, he will 
know, of course, that Pierre has been blabbing, 
and I honestly believe, Mr. Forbes, that he would 
kill the poor fool.” 

‘‘He’s an agreeable sort of a young man, ain’t 
he ?” Forbes commented. 

“I firmly believe,” answered Jarvis, “that he’s 
going mad. He always used to have his times 
of insanity and violence, but he was in the main 
an awfully decent sort of chap, except of course 
with the tenants; he’s always been abominable 
with them. But he’s terribly changed,” he went 
on, with some embarrassment, “ever since his 
lordship’s marriage. That made a great differ- 
ence in his position.” 

“It would,” Forbes agreed. “I see that, of 
course.” 

“Well, now,” asked Burke, “what do you think 
we ought to do 

“Wait till his lordship comes home.” 

“But when is he coming?” 

274 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Soon,” answered Forbes critically, “or I miss 
my guess. Say/’ he added, ‘‘ I don’t mind telling 
you, but I telegraphed to him last night 

“From Ballycreel?” asked Jarvis. 

“Yes,” said Forbes, “first from Ballycreel. 
But somehow I didn’t like that boy’s eye and so, 
later on, I repeated the telegram from Dunbog- 
gan.” 

“Oh! I am glad you did that,” said Burke. 
“I think I may say without disloyalty that it’s 
just as well that you repeated it from Dunbog- 
gan.” 

“I like your spirit,” said Forbes. “Oh! you 
don’t need to tell me anything. I just happened 
not to like that boy’s eye, that’s all.” 

“That’s all, of course,” Jarvis agreed. 

It so chanced that the boy whose eye Forbes 
did not like was even then closeted in the oak 
room with John Gresham. 

“I am afraid I disturb your honour,” said he, 
when John turned his ghastly face upon him, 
“but a telegram has just come for her ladyship’s 
father. I kem up to ask ye, would I send it to 
him ^ It says, 'Meet 8.52 to-night — Glamoran.’ ” 

“What,” demanded John — “what did you say, 
you villain 

“Glory be to God, sir,” protested the furtive 

275 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

youth, “I said nothing at all but what kem out 
of the wire. Shure! how could / help it? You 
tould me to bring ye all the messages what kem 
for the castle before Td give them to any one 
else.’’ 

“Then listen to me, Tim; you are to forget that 
this ever came, that you ever heard of it. You’re 
to deny that you were in the office when they sent 
it out from Dublin. If you ever admit that you 
received this and gave it to me. I’ll blow your 
foolish head off your worthless body. Now go.” 

Tim required no second bidding; and John, 
left face to face with this last and worst catastro- 
phe, drank half a tumblerful of raw whiskey and 
tried to bring a collected mind to bear upon it. 
One thing was clear, Pat had already left London. 
It was impossible to stop him, it was equally im- 
possible to let him come home to meet Dot’s 
reproaches and a new four-year-old son. To 
get the boy away; that was the first thing to do; 
to get him away and then to persuade Dot — he 
cursed himself now for pot having gained more 
of her confidence and friendship — that her only 
dignified, effectual course would be to assume 
ignorance of Michael’s existence until Pat should 
have himself confessed it to her. That might be 
managed; failing that, he could tell his brother 
276 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

that Dot met Michael by accident, had instantly 
jumped to the incredibly wrong conclusion, and 
that John had left her unenlightened thinking that 
a little lesson in the wifely duty of faith would do 
her good. But first there was the child to be got 
rid of. John again fortified himself from the 
decanter, and set out for the nursery. He would 
easily invent messages upon which to despatch the 
two nurses, and then he could remove the child. 

The nurseries were separated from the rest of 
the house by a green baize door. Gresham stood 
at it and called the American nurse to him. He 
despatched her to Mrs. O’Leary. When she was 
quite out of hearing he called the other woman 
and sent her to his own apartments with a message 
to Pierre. Then he passed through the baize 
door and closed it softly. From the big day 
nursery where he and Pat had played together, 
he heard the laughter and the hurried feet of Pitty 
Pat and Michael. Softly he approached the open 
door and, with a carefully seductive smile, went in. 
The two boys stopped instantly and stared at him. 
Pluto, asleep upon the hearth-rug, opened a red- 
rimmed eye and wagged a lazy tail. Then de- 
tecting storm signals, he discreetly withdrew under 
a sofa, and a figure near the window rose and 
stood at attention. 


277 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“What can we do for you, sir?” said James, 
alert, respectful and ironical. “It isn’t often that 
you honour this part of the house.” 

“Why aren’t you in London with your master ?” 
snapped John. 

“His lordship has quite given me up, sir, in 
favour of Thomas, quite ’anded me over, as it 
were, to his little lordship. I spends my time 
taking care of ’/m now.” 

“Well!” said John, “you may go on taking 
care of his little lordship. My business is with 
the other boy. I want him down in the oak room 
for a few moments. Come here, Michael.” 

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said James, interposing 
his quiet person between John and the two chil- 
dren, “but her ladyship’s orders are that Michael 
is to stay in the nurseries. ’E’s quite ’appy ’ere, 
as you see. I am sorry to disoblige you, sir, but 
he can’t go with you. Unless,” he suggested 
hopefully, “you was to call her ladyship up to 
change her orders.” 

“It’s not important enough for that,” said 
John, as he turned away. And though he had in 
his own person proved the harmlessness of curses 
he yet most thoroughly cursed the faithful James 
as he went down-stairs again. 


278 


CHAPTER XLIV 


ylRRIVED in the oak room he set about pol- 
ishing and examining his guns. A dull 
flame of madness was burning in him, and he fed 
it from time to time from decanter and syringe; 
and yet to all appearances he was the ordinary 
John Gresham of ordinary days. As he worked 
among his guns a half-crazy plot outlined itself 
before him. He selected a fowling-piece and pro- 
ceeded to load cartridges for it. Five he loaded 
with ordinary bird shot but for the sixth he used 
heavy buck-shot and marked its paper wad with 
a cross. Then he loaded six more with bird shot 
and he had nearly finished when the door opened 
and Jarvis Burke came in. 

“The gamekeeper reports a scourge of stoats,” 
John told Jarvis. “He and I are going out to- 
gether toward evening to see if we can get a few 
of them.” 

“Good sport; I think Til go, too.” 

“That would be charming, but I am afraid we 
can’t manage it. Three would be rather too 
many.” 

279 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

‘'But you needn’t bother to load shells,” said 
Jarvis. “There are a lot of them in the gun- 
room. By the way, what number are they?” 
he asked with apparent unconcern, crossing to the 
table where John had arranged them and taking 
up one. “ ‘Twelves,’ yes; I loaded some ‘twelves’ 
only last week.” 

Just before luncheon he found the oak room 
unoccupied and slipping in he abstracted the 
marked shell and substituted one similarly marked 
which he had ready in his pocket. He then went 
to the gun-room, locked the door and unloaded 
John’s cartridges. “Buck-shot,” he exclaimed, 
when the nine heavy shot lay in his hand. “Buck- 
shot, as I’m a living sinner, and he tells me it’s for 
stoats. Now, whether he means suicide or mur- 
der it’s hard to say; but in either case, it will do 
no harm to spike his guns. If he weren’t so con- 
foundedly sharp. I’d give him a blank, but he’d 
notice the difference in weight. I’ll just get him 
up a snipe-shot shell, mark it as he has marked 
this one and let him take pot shots with that.” 

Jarvis, later in the afternoon, found reason to 
congratulate himself upon his little interference. 
He was playing billiards with Mr. Forbes when 
Maloney came to say that Mr. Gresham wanted 
him. The day was still dour and glowering. 

280 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Dorothy was in the nursery, Mrs. Forbes was 
with Mrs. O’Leary in the still-room. Every one 
was imprisoned by the ‘‘clearing shower’’ which 
was still falling doggedly. And Jarvis hoped that 
John would abandon his intent upon the stoats 
together with the more sinister and mysterious 
purpose for which he had intended the buck-shot. 
To his disappointment, however, he found his 
employer in heavy outing attire and a most 
execrable frame of mind. 

Whiskey and morphine, desperation, panic and 
insanity make a tragic blend. He locked the door 
as soon as Jarvis entered, put the key in his pocket 
and took up his gun. Jarvis thought with thanks- 
giving of the abstracted buck-shot and wondered 
if his own was the life he had saved. 

“You will stay here,” said John, “until I come 
back. If any one knocks at the door tell them 
I am here but too busy to be disturbed. Tell 
them if you like,” said he, with a sardonic grin as 
he drank another half-tumbler of whiskey, ‘‘that 
I’m drunk, asleep, dead, anything you please ex- 
cept that I’m not here. You won’t let anybody 
in because I have locked the door and I shall take 
the key with me. Now go over to that bookcase 
and look at the books in it for three minutes. 
Never mind what you hear. Do what I tell you 
281 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

and you will be safe, but turn around before the 
three minutes are up — ^you have your watch — and 
I won’t answer for the consequences.” 

To turn his back upon his employer seemed to 
Jarvis the acme of recklessness, but since he was 
unarmed, trapped and locked in with a maniac he 
realised that his only hope lay in keeping that 
maniac as nearly calm as might be. He there- 
fore obeyed instructions with an assumption of 
cool courage and at the end of three minutes he 
turned back to the room and found himself alone. 
He had heard a grating sound like the opening 
and closing of a drawer. 

'‘This,” said he, as he looked about the empty 
room and contemplated his position — "this is no 
place for a nervous man. It would be deucedly 
exciting and spectacular if one were not living in 
it. As an entertainment it might do. As an ex- 
perience it’s a little creepy. The whole thing is 
getting beyond me and I don’t see how his lord- 
ship’s return will benefit us even if we live to see 
him.” 

He then fell to thinking of the countess. How 
changed she was since the advent of that mysterious 
child — how changed, yet still how lovely! Real- 
ising her need of help and his helplessness he 
echoed Mr. Forbes’s satisfaction. It was indeed 
282 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

most fortunate that that capable, shrewd and 
kindly presence was near her. If only he could 
have informed that astute visitor of John’s latest 
escapade! If only he could escape from this lux- 
urious prison chamber! He was torn by anxiety: 
vague and therefore harder to bear than any defi- 
nite foreboding. He knew that, partly through 
his disregard of warnings and partly through his 
innate dread of making scenes, a maniac armed 
and unguarded was at large in an unsuspecting 
little community. He chafed and rebelled against 
his imprisonment and made ceaseless efforts, 
sometimes calm and reasoned, sometimes des- 
perate and haphazard, to find the secret exit 
through which John Gresham had disappeared. 
Once or twice before he had suspected the exist- 
ence of some secret channel of communication with 
the outside world. Now he was sure of it, but 
the high oak wainscotting and the two heavy 
bookcases resisted all his investigations and left 
him angry, hot and thwarted. 

The dreary day was drawing to its dark close 
and Jarvis had decided that on the expiration of 
another ten minutes he would make his escape by 
blowing open the door with a decoy cartridge he 
still had in his pocket. He realised that he might 
pass through the door straight to paradise but he 
283 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

was nearly desperate. The old room which had 
been built to be impregnable in the year 1490 
was impregnable still. 

Its windows were slits through which even 
Jarvis’s slim body could not pass. Also they were 
high up in the wall, far beyond reach. Jarvis was 
as safely trapped as though he were in the Bastile. 

He could not doubt that Gresham was abroad 
upon some evil purpose. It seemed equally prob- 
able that he intended to involve Jarvis in his 
villainy. It was better to chance the gunpowder 
than to endure that. He abstracted the shot from 
the cartridge, unscrewed the heavy door knob, 
and was trying to force the cartridge into the aper- 
ture, when he heard the grating sound again and 
turned to find John Gresham beside the table. 
He was now absolutely and openly mad. Jarvis 
had read and heard of hair-raising terror. He ex- 
perienced it now, and as the two men faced one 
another, white, tense and ghastly, the whole world 
seemed to wait and listen for the next act in the 
tragedy of the oak room. There was murder in 
the air. But the world did not wait long. There 
were cries and the sound of heavy feet upon the 
avenue. There were answering cries and hurry- 
ing feet within the castle. Then John Gresham 
moved, but not toward Jarvis; he reached for the 
284 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

decanter, poured out a tumberful of raw whiskey 
and swallowed it. 

‘‘Curse them!’’ he snarled and drank again. 
“Go out,” he commanded, putting the key in its 
place and unlocking the door. 

“What have you done?” whispered Burke. 
“Where have you been?” 

“I’ve done nothing,” Gresham said. “Tve 
never left this room. You know it. You’ll swear 
it or by God you’ll never know or swear any- 
thing again on this side of eternity.” 

Even while he was talking he was removing 
from his person all traces of his outing. He 
slipped out of his boots and puttees. Under them 
he had worn golf stockings and when he had 
changed his coat and put on a pair of patent-leather 
pumps he was in his ordinary afternoon dress. 

Meanwhile the commotion outside was growing 
momentarily louder and Jarvis, coming out of the 
darkened oak room, was almost blinded by the 
glare of electric lights. The whole household was 
gathered in the hall or on the steps. Jarvis joined 
the countess at the open door. 

“Where have you been, boy?” asked Forbes. 
“There’s been an accident. John Gresham is 
reported to be wounded or killed. They are 
bringing him home on a stretcher. It’s hard to 
285 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

understand from these fellows just what has 
happened. Murder, I think,” he added, dropping 
his voice. 

“God help us all, sir; Tm afraid it is,” said 
Mrs. O’Leary. “You know, Mr. Burke, how 
he’s hated.” 

“ ’Twill be McGurk that done it,” one of the 
footmen broke out. “He was sayin’ he would 
this great while back.” 

“They are coming now,” cried Dorothy. “I 
see men carrying something down there among 
the beeches. Oh! poor fellow! I’ll go and tele- 
phone to the village. Dr. Maguire can get here 
nearly as soon as they do.” 

When she returned from the library the men had 
set their improvised litter upon the floor in the hall 
and the servants had gathered about the insensi- 
ble figure. All John’s iniquities were forgiven 
now, and tears softened many an eye which had 
scowled only that morning upon “the master.” 
Forbes was making an amateur investigation of 
his injuries; Jarvis was looking on and feeling 
that the whole world was falling down — John 
Gresham’s appearances and disappearances were 
too much for him. Three minutes ago he had 
been furiously alive. Now he was apparently 
dead. In three minutes! 

286 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

You had better go up-stairs with mother/^ said 
Forbes as his daughter approached. “The poor 
fellow’s face is shot up considerable and he’s not 
what you would call pleasing to look at.” 

But Dorothy, in her hunting expeditions and 
her travels, had seen many accidents and had 
learned from her husband a few rules of soldierly 
first aid. She therefore disregarded her father’s 
warning and stepped into the place the servants 
made for her. Then the hall, the whole house, 
echoed to her cry: 

“It’s Pat! Oh! God, it’s Pat. Fools,” she 
stormed, turning on her people, “don’t you know 
your lord ?” And as she gathered the dis- 
figured head to her breast the door of the oak 
room opened and John Gresham stepped out. 


287 


CHAPTER XLV 


H alf an hour later the village doctor came 
out of the Earl of Glamoran’s room and 
descended to the hall where Mr. and Mrs. Forbes 
were waiting to hear his verdict. 

'T have done all that can be done just now and 
without special instruments. Ah! Mr. Gresham/' 
he added, as John came up to them, ‘T was just 
about to say that you must send to Dublin for 
McBirney. The case is entirely beyond me. If 
you will allow me to use your telephone I can 
describe the injury to him. He will have to bring 
a nurse and an assistant with him. The operation 
ought to be performed immediately." 

‘‘McBirney? Operation?" John repeated. 
“But McBirney is an eye man." 

“Precisely. The injury is to the eyes." 

“And there is danger, doctor ?" questioned Mrs. 
Forbes. 

“Of death, no; of blindness, yes. He received 
a charge of snipe shot full in the face." 

“Snipe shot?" repeated John. He seemed inca- 
pable of an original remark. 

288 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Yes, snipe shot. If it had been anything larger 
you wouldn’t have required my services. But 
I’ve done all I can. Precious little! I haven’t 
even been able to keep her ladyship from suspect- 
ing the gravity of the wounds. She never left us, 
and I must say that for a lady of her rank and 
position she was wonderfully useful and sensible: 
no whining, no tears.” 

“The telephone,” said John, “is in the library; 
will you come with me?” 

“Now, mother,” remonstrated Mr. Forbes, 
when he was left alone with his wife, “you’ve got 
to brace up and come out strong. This is a sort 
of trouble that every one can help in.” 

“ But I don’t understand it,” she persisted. 

“Nobody understands it,” said Forbes; “as far 
as we’ve got in putting things together it seems 
that Pat arrived unexpectedly at the station, 
found no one there to meet him, got a jarvey to 
drive him up and that some one shot at him from 
behind a hedge. It’s the general impression that 
he was mistaken for John. Lots of the people 
round here have been ‘hiding something from 
him’ for a long time, and the likeness which de- 
ceived all of us except Dorothy deceived this 
would-be murderer. The horse bolted at the 
sound of the shot, threw out Pat and the driver, 
289 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

smashed the shafts and everything else he could 
reach with his heels, and then ran away. The 
driver was not much hurt. He called to some men 
working in a field and they brought Pat home, 
thinking, of course, that he was John. But John, 
according to himself, and according to young Jar- 
vis here, was busy in the oak room all afternoon. 
I suppose we’ll never find out who really did the 
shooting. Everybody will know, but nobody will 
tell; that’s one of the little traits that make the 
Irish so hard to govern.” 

John and the doctor came back at this point 
and the doctor corroborated Forbes’s statement. 
‘‘Nothing is more unlikely,” said he, “than that 
you’ll ever find out who did it, unless some one 
turns crown’s witness.” 

John Gresham turned to Jarvis but could not 
catch his eyes. Jarvis’s face was not encourag- 
ing. 

“ I’ll take a pretty good try at it, anyway,” said 
John Forbes grimly. “I don’t propose to have 
my daughter widowed and my grandson or- 
phaned and just sit down and do nothing about 
it.” 

“But it isn’t quite so bad as that,” the doctor 
broke in. “At least I suppose we may say it 
isn’t, though personally I should prefer being dead 
290 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

to being blind. It may not be even that if 
McBirney gets here in time. He promised to 
start immediately. You know his lordship is un- 
conscious; that’s one thing in our favour. He’s 
quiet and I’m just going up to keep him so until 
McBirney arrives. If he begins to move his eyes 
about the whole thing will be up.” 

Left to themselves they gathered more closely 
about the fire, and waited with what self-command 
they might for the coming of the great man from 
Dublin. The rain and the wind were as wild as 
they had been all day, but the darkness without 
the house and the shadow of death within made 
them seem doubly remorseless. 

John roamed through the house like a caged 
beast. He started at every sound, at every move- 
ment. Sometimes he went up to listen at Pat’s 
door, sometimes he shut himself into his room and 
drank. But he always came back to Jarvis Burke 
and the Forbeses at the fireplace, and always he 
talked of the detection of the criminal. Despite 
all his resolves, all his sense of danger, he could 
not keep away from the topic. It was rather dif- 
ficult for the others. He did not know that his 
brother was supposed to have been mistaken for 
himself, and no one cared to enlighten him. 

The terrified servants were gradually restored 
291 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

to some semblance of order and the household 
swung back into its accustomed round. There 
was a dinner at which little was eaten and less was 
said. Dr. Maguire, summoned to this meal, re- 
ported that things up-stairs were quite unchanged. 
Her ladyship was still beside her husband, and his 
lordship, though apparently unconscious from the 
effects of concussion, shock and drugs, seemed to 
know when she was near him and to miss her 
when she moved. Dr. Maguire ate hurriedly and 
heartily and went back to his patient. 

Meanwhile Dorothy underwent progressive and 
heart-breaking torture as she looked at her hus- 
band’s quiet body and disfigured face. Now that 
the bleeding was checked she could see the extent 
of his injuries. Only a few little pin pricks they 
seemed. Dr. Maguire had picked the shot out 
of those on the forehead and the left side of the 
face. But there were three little flecks of red in 
the left eyelid: one on the right. It was the 
only mark on the right side of the face, and it 
might mean so much. Dr. Maguire left these 
untouched. 

"‘There is a chance,” he told Dorothy, “that the 
bleeding may only be from the lids. Perhaps the 
eyes themselves are not seriously involved. We 
can only wait for McBirney.” 

292 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

And so she waited. There was nothing else 
to do except from time to time to wipe away 
the blood which welled slowly through the quiet 
lashes. 

And this was the home-coming to which she 
had looked forward with such contradictory emo- 
tions. She had dreaded it and yet desired it. 
It would at least put an end to her uncertainty for, 
against all reason and all evidence, she had still 
doubted. She knew that her father had never 
trusted John, and sometimes she had been able 
to believe that somehow Pat would explain, 
would make things right again, would take away 
the load which lay upon her heart and made 
hope and happiness, almost life itself, impossible. 

And now Pat had come home, and all these tor- 
ments were little and insignificant beside the two 
great fears that he brought with him. She no 
longer asked herself whether he had deceived her, 
she almost no longer cared; other questions tor- 
tured her. Would he live I Would this horrible 
stillness ever pass away from his long slim body ^ 
Would he see ? Was the light and the love for- 
ever gone out of his dear eyes ? What difference 
did anything else make And for the answer to 
these vital questions she must go, not to Pat, not 
to her father, but to a stranger, a man of whom 

293 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

she had never heard until that night, a man who 
presently entered with Dr. Maguire, followed by 
a younger man carrying a hand-bag, and by a 
white-capped linen-clothed nurse. She was pres- 
ently aware of those people expecting her to trust 
her husband’s life to them. That they thought it 
quite in the nature of things that they should lay 
hands upon Pat’s face and hair and fair dear 
body, and they expected that she, to whom he 
belonged, to whom his face and hair and body 
were the sacred manifestations of the divine power, 
should go away and leave them to do as they 
wished with him. 

A wonderful thing is a good professional man- 
ner. Dr. McBirney had it. He brought it to bear 
upon Dorothy; and while she was still fiercely de- 
termining to stay with Pat at all costs and against 
all persuasions, she found herself out in the hall, 
heard the door locked behind her and, crouching 
against the wall, she smelled the sickeningly sweet 
smell of ether. It carried her irresistibly back 
to the night when Pitty Pat was born, and then it 
mercifully carried her quite away to unconscious- 
ness. And it was Jarvis who found her face down- 
ward on the ground outside her husband’s door. 
He picked her up and carried her down to the 
others at the fire, and there the Countess of Gla- 


294 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

moran lay in her father’s arms and cried like the 
little girl he had so often comforted at Edgecombe, 
while science did its work in the quiet room up- 
stairs. 


295 


CHAPTER XLVI 


P RESENTLY McBirney came down-stairs. 

Dorothy had stopped crying and John, look- 
ing like a nightmare of himself, came in to hear the 
great man’s verdict. The great man had none to 
give. It was impossible at that juncture to predi- 
cate anything; they could only hope for the best 
and prepare for the worst. 

“By the worst you mean — Dorothy ques- 
tioned. 

“Absolute blindness,” he answered. “There 
is, however, every reason to hope that the right 
eye can be saved, but the left eye is more seriously 
threatened. I say we must hope for the best, and 
the best will be the complete restoration of both 
eyes and the happy avoidance of disfigurement.” 
“And when,” asked Dorothy, “shall we know ?” 
“Certainly in not less than a week; perhaps not 
till the end of a fortnight. It depends somewhat 
upon his lordship’s constitution and somewhat 
upon nursing and care. These, of course, he will 
have. But let me impress upon your ladyship 
that he must be kept absolutely calm; excitement 
2q6 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

would undo everything. Let me also say that 
much depends upon you. You must conserve 
your own strength, energy and self-control. You 
will require them all. Have you had any dinner ? 
I thought not! Well, have it now and then go up 
to him. He’s asking for you. And, remember, 
no excitement; keep him calm and happy, and I 
verily believe we may count upon the best. My 
dear madam,” he broke off, turning to Mrs. Forbes, 
“will you make yourself responsible for the physi- 
cal well-being of your daughter ? See that she 
eats and sleeps sensibly, takes a little air and exer- 
cise every day and does not fret unduly.” 

“I will,” said Mrs. Forbes; “indeed I will,” 
and forthwith set out upon her task by ringing 
for Maloney and conferring with him upon the 
immediate production of sandwiches and sherry. 
She afterward sought audience with Mrs. O’Leary, 
and sustained herself through the anxiety of the 
next few days by marvels of invalid cookery which 
she performed in the still-room under the admiring 
gaze of the still-room maids. She put Dorothy and 
Pat upon invalid diet. She would have treated 
Forbes in the same way had he not successfully re- 
sisted; and even John Gresham she once or twice 
persuaded to partake of chicken broth and toast. 
The madness was dying down in Gresham. He 
297 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

had gone forth deliberately to kill his brother and 
now the thought that he had blinded him was 
torture. Nature had herself taken John’s case 
in hand and his constitution had refused to accept 
any more whiskey. For a day or two he starved 
on water and morphine. Then Mrs. Forbes, 
finding the lion with his claws drawn and his 
strength gone, introduced the chicken broth and 
triumphed. 

In all the hurry and excitement of those first 
few days, John took no part. Once or twice he 
was sent for to his brother’s room but the sight 
of his own handiwork, the bandaged head and the 
great quiet body on the bed, rendered him almost 
speechless. Yet once, being alone with Pat and 
knowing that Michael’s presence in the house 
could not long be kept secret from him, he had told 
his brother that the child was there. As much of 
Pat’s face as was left visible by his bandages 
smiled and he reached blindly for his brother’s 
hand. “It is as I should wish it,” said he. 
“Didn’t I tell you that I had married a wonderful 
woman ?” 

“ But don’t say anything to her about it,” warned 
John; “they won’t let me in again if they know 
I’ve told you. You are not supposed to be agi- 
tated.” 


298 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

‘‘Nonsense!’’ said his brother, “I’m glad you’ve 
told me. She is the most marvellous woman in 
the world, John, and you say,” he went on, “that 
she’s going to bring him up with our boy ? Well, 
he couldn’t be in better hands.” 

“But you will say nothing to her yet awhile 
John urged. 

“Very good,” agreed his brother, “since you are 
so keen on it, I won’t.” And yet when John had 
left and Dorothy came back to him, he called her 
close to the bedside. “My darling,” he whis- 
pered, “John has told me how nobly you be- 
haved about ” 

But Dorothy’s hand was on his lips. “No, 
no,” she cried and fell upon her knees beside 
him. “I wasn’t noble nor good nor any of the 
things you think. I did it because I felt that I 
had to do it, but I hated it, hated it, hated it. 
I did it because I thought you would wish me 
to, but oh! Pat, why didn’t you tell me instead 
of letting it come upon me as it did ?” 

“I always meant to,” he made reply, “but 
somehow I put it off from day to day. We were 
so happy, sweetheart, and you were so true and 
bright that I didn’t want even a shadow of that 
old grief to come near you. I’m sorry I ever went 
upon this cursed journey. If I had been here the 
299 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

thing might never have happened. And yet, dear, 
Tm glad it did. Fm proud to think that your 
own heart led you to do a difficult and noble 
thing. You are a very good woman, Dorothy, 
my wife.” 

“No, no. I’m not,” she protested, laying her 
head beside his on the pillow. “And now, dear, 
you must try to sleep; you mustn’t be agitated, 
the doctors say.” 

“Oh! hang the doctors,” was Pat’s ungrateful 
answer. “If I ever get over that fool’s shot, I 
shall owe my recovery to you, as I owe you every- 
thing else that makes life worth living.” 

But presently he did fall asleep, and Dot, afraid 
of disturbing him, crouched beside him with her 
head beside his head. All the doubts were over 
now, it was true. The worst was true. And he 
took it like this! Surely the accident must have 
affected his reason. He had been so unrepent- 
ant, had thought so lightly of the moral aspect of 
what he had done. Oh ! it was clear enough that 
he loved her, that he was relieved to find her duti- 
ful and complacent, but what manner of man 
was he, this husband of hers ? Had he no con- 
science ? She had expected humility, mea culpa, 
prayers for pardon. He had offered her none 
of these, had accepted her love and her caresses 
300 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

without compunction, had disinherited her son 
without a word. Oh, what manner of man was 
he.? 

Pat, still asleep, turned toward her, threw an 
arm across her shoulder and snuggled his head 
into the hollow of her neck. For an instant she 
thought of casting him from her, of springing 
up and denouncing him, of forcing him to see the 
enormity of what he had done. Then she remem- 
bered the physician’s warnings. She gathered 
Pat into her embrace and began to cry silently, 
quietly as if her heart would break. 


301 


CHAPTER XLVII 


waiting is the worst part of it,” Mr. 

X Forbes was saying to his wife. It was five 
days since Pat had been hurt, and Dr. McBirney 
at the close of his daily visit had promised a ver- 
dict for the next day. ‘^And even after we know 
whether he is going to see or not, we shall still have 
the investigation into the attempt to murder him.” 

‘‘That,” said Jarvis Burke, who was walking 
with them to the stables where Forbes, having 
taken the last of his lessons that morning, and 
having bought an enormous charger in Dublin, 
was ready to electrify his wife, “will be a perfectly 
useless investigation. Five days gone and nothing 
done — they might as well give it up.” 

“They might indeed,” Forbes answered; “they 
say they’re waiting for the earl’s evidence. Well, 
he has none to give. I asked him. He doesn’t 
know as much about it as we do. The fellow will 
get clear away. His pals will deny everything: 
that he ever had a gun, that he knew how to 
shoot, that he had any arms, or legs, that he was 
out on that afternoon, that he was ever born — 


302 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

anything that the case seems to require. Of all 
the perversions of truth of which humanity is 
capable, I think an accomplice in a crime like 
this is the most abominable/’ This speech and 
Mrs. Forbes’s hearty concurrence in it were rather 
too much for Jarvis Burke, and he invented a for- 
gotten appointment which called him back to the 
house. 

“And then,” Mrs. Forbes went on, “even after 
those things are cleared up, we still have the ques- 
tion of Michael. We have a wonderful daughter, 
John. I wonder what has made her so brave and 
calm 

“Love,” answered Forbes promptly. 

“I have read about the triumph of love,” his 
wife answered, “but I never saw it before. She 
loves Pat so much that she can believe in him in 
spite of everything.” 

“Of course she does; of course,” said Forbes. 
“But I can imagine an even higher triumph of 
love. Supposing that she knew him to be guilty 
and yet loved him, wouldn’t that be even nobler, 
dear.?” 

“Yes, I suppose it would. How lives differ! 
Everything has been calm and uncomplicated for 
me, and here’s poor little Dot struggling with such 
awful uncertainties.” 


303 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“She’ll come through them, you’ll see,” cried 
Dot’s father. “And now I want you to watch 
my struggle.” 

But Mr. Forbes’s equestrian exhibition was 
doomed for that day. A footman hurried out 
through the yew walk to say that a lady and gen- 
I tleman had called to see Mrs. Forbes. 

“Some of the neighbours, I suppose, Thomas,” 
said she, “coming to ask after his lordship.” 

Mrs. Forbes had enjoyed numerous interviews 
of this nature. They generally began in formal 
inquiries and ended in the intimacies of tea. But 
Thomas was of the respectful opinion that these 
were not neighbours — they were, if he might haz- 
ard an opinion, Americans. Their names they 
had disclosed as Petty — Mr. and Mrs. Abraham 
Petty. They had come with a small trunk; on 
a jaunting car; from Dunboggan. Thomas’s 
manner, as he detailed this report, seemed to add 
that Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Petty might, without 
breaking his heart, return with their small trunk, 
on the jaunting car, to Dunboggan. 

“Petty,” cried Mrs. Forbes miserably. “Oh, 
John, The House is burned, and they’ve come to 
break it to us.” 

She flew to the great hall and there she found 
Abraham Petty resplendent, as of yore, of shirt 
304 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

and cowlick, self-confident and awkward, in a 
triumph of embarrassment. By his side stood 
Mrs. Abraham Petty, nee Rose Matilda Perkins, 
reflecting all her husband’s emotion, save his 
assurance, and setting up a furious blush on her 
own account. 

“What has happened demanded Mrs. Forbes, 
waiving all ceremony and greeting. 

“We got married,” answered Abraham. 

“The House?” panted Mrs. Forbes. 

“The House is doing fine,” Abraham made 
reply. “We had peas and beans out of the gar- 
den right along until we left. Ma said I was to 
tell ye that she thinks Reuben Sands is selling 
your garden truck.” 

“And Mis’ Petty,” the bride began, “wanted 
I should tell you that the little window in the 
pink guest-room blew open in a thunder-storm 
the week before last and that the rain done a lot 
of damage to the wall-paper between the win- 
dow and the floor. It ain’t spread and it ain’t 
run through: otherwise everything is just as you 
left it.” 

Mrs. Forbes allowed these soothing tidings to 
sink into her mind. They might not have been 
soothing under ordinary circumstances, but com- 
ing so quickly upon the holocaust which she had 

305 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

imagined, an excess of enterprise on Reuben^s 
part and one damaged breadth of wall-paper 
seemed happy tidings. Mr. Forbes was greeting 
his townspeople when his wife, having made these 
reflections, returned to the surface of things and 
she joined most heartily in his cordiality. The 
bride sank into silence. She, who in her glass 
case had once outrivalled the parrot, found herself 
struck dumb by the dignity of her position as 
Abraham Petty’s wife. But Abraham suffered 
from no conversational disability. “ It’s our wed- 
ding tower,” he explained largely. ‘‘We’ve had a 
real good year in business, and I says to Matilda we 
couldn’t do no better than to run over and visit Mr. 
and Mrs. Forbes and Dot. The old gentleman 
that let us in says Dot’s husband ain’t well. I’m 
real sorry for that; he’s quite a nice feller for an 
Englishman. But I guess his being sick won’t 
make no real difference. I wouldn’t have him 
know it for the world but we really came to 
visit you and Dot.” 

“That’s very good of you,” said Mrs. Forbes. 
“ I’ll just go and see if Dot can come down for a 
moment.” 

“Don’t tell her who it is,” suggested the face- 
tious Abraham. “She’ll be just tickled to death 
when she sees us. She don’t know we’re married, 
does she ? They didn’t telegraph it over here to 
306 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

any of the papers, did they ? I never thought of 
that before.” 

He was dissuaded from thinking of it then. 

His marriage, he was assured, had wonderfully 
escaped the argus eye of the British press. Greatly 
relieved on this score, he allowed one of the foot- 
men to take the small trunk up-stairs. Matilda 
followed it and Abraham, removing his coat and 
wiping his heated brow, sat down in a splendour 
of blinding shirt sleeves to talk to Mr. Forbes. 
He had taken the precaution to inform himself 
rather thoroughly upon Mr. Forbes’s affairs at 
Edgecombe — not with any definite idea of ren- 
dering himself more welcome than his natural 
charms made him, but simply in pursuance of 
the principle that it was always well to be thor- 
oughly informed upon whatever did not concern 
him. The more personal, embarrassing and se- 
cret the information, the greater its value in his 
eyes. In the present instance, however, his infor- 
mation was all favourable and reassuring. He 
was just describing the successful yield of the to- 
bacco fields when Maloney passed through the 
hall. The ancient servitor stopped and stared. 
Never had he been called upon to deal with a 
guest who tried to undress in the hall. Abra- 
ham, growing excited, waved a pink and purple 
shirt sleeve and Maloney’s eye grew hard. He 

307 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

took up Abraham’s coat from the chair upon 
which that careful traveller had laid it, and before 
Mr. Petty had quite realised what he was doing, 
he had allowed himself and his shirt sleeves to be 
enshrouded. He winked impressively at Forbes 
during the process and, when the scandalised 
Maloney withdrew, he said: 

“Thinks Til take cold, don’t he? Some old 
gentlemen is awful fussy that way; might as well 
be old ladies. But who is he, anyway?” 

“He’s the butler.” 

“Oh, one of the help ?” 

“Yes, he waits on the table.” And Abraham, 
when he later joined the overwhelmed Matilda in 
a room in which she was afraid to move and against 
whose impressive dignity he only supported him- 
self by likening it to a museum, was able to en- 
tertain that flustered exile by humorous accounts 
of Dot’s man waitress. 

Dorothy had before that time emerged from 
Pat’s room to welcome her guests, and she had 
wisely given orders that they should be left free 
of maid or valet. Maloney’s eyebrows, when he 
received this order, seemed to say that it was an 
injudicious one. He considered that a strong 
young footman should be dedicated to Mr. Petty 
to balk his tendency to disrobe in public. Ma- 
308 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

loney had three times that afternoon caught Mr. 
Petty without a coat, and three times he had, 
greatly to that gentleman’s disgust, insisted upon 
helping him into it. 

Dinner on that first evening might almost have 
been in America. Neither John nor Jarvis Burke 
appeared. Dorothy was with the others through 
three or four courses, and Mr. Petty, who had 
never seen a woman in evening dress, was so 
amazed by her appearance that he hardly noticed 
that Thomas, deputed to that duty by Maloney, 
put him into his coat for the sixth time. Mr. 
Petty was not given to reflections, especially of 
a self-critical kind, but that vision of Dorothy, so 
friendly, so gracious, so beautiful and so marvel- 
lously dressed, made him wonder, even in the 
adored presence of her who had once been Rose 
Matilda Perkins, whether he had been quite wise 
in his long-ago rejection of Dot Forbes’s love. He 
brought himself back to self-esteem and to loyalty 
by reflecting that Dot would never do in Edge- 
combe; clothes like hers, he thought, as she trailed 
up-stairs again, rings and necklaces and ‘"jewel- 
lery” in her hair, were all right in a play-acting 
house like this, but Rose Matilda, plain unvar- 
nished Rose Matilda, went better with the hard- 
ware business. 


309 


CHAPTER XLVIII 


S IX days had passed since what every one called, 
but nobody considered, the accident. Mc- 
Birney had promised to test the earl’s sight in a 
day or two. The inflammation had been sub- 
dued, the bandaging was less severe and the 
room was darkened through the day. Only at 
night were the curtains thrown wide. The nurse 
no longer served on night duty, and the door be- 
tween Pat’s room and Dot’s stood ajar now so that 
she could watch him and wait upon him. It was 
a still night, and Pat awoke without cause and 
without motion. Far away in the silent house the 
clock struck three: there were hours yet to pass 
before morning and it was unlikely that he would 
sleep again. Lack of exercise and of air, con- 
finement, pain and fears of blindness had made 
his nights wakeful and hard to bear. 

Blindness! These last few days had taught 
him what that meant. The helplessness of it, 
the blank, queer loneliness, worst when he was 
not alone. The fear of being loved by Dot only 
through pity and a sense of duty. The useless 
310 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

years of empty days. Never to see his wife again. 
Never to see all the gradual changes which would 
make a man of Pitty Pat. Never to hunt or ride 
or drive or shoot. To live like an old woman in a 
bath-chair. To know only what he was told, to 
have only what he was given, to be useless, a bur- 
den and — he always came back to it — an object 
of pity. And they would tell him to-morrow. 
McBirney would come with his damned profes- 
sional soothing purr to tell him that his life was 
over, his eyes were closed. Pat could imagine it 
all, and the touch of Dot’s steady little hand on 
his. She had been with him at every dressing and 
examination; she would surely not leave him to 
face the last alone. And the nurse cooing in sin- 
cere reassurance. Perhaps Mrs. O’Leary would 
be there; she had been much in the sick-room, a 
welcome and valued comforter and entertainer. 
Well! he would disappoint them all of their scene; 
he would know now. 

He slipped the bandage from his head and lay 
a little while with his eyes closed but uncovered. 
He knew that he must be cautious. Also he was 
afraid. Then slowly, very slowly, he opened his 
eyes. Straight in front of him there was a pale 
oblong cut into smaller oblongs by black inter- 
secting lines. Everything else was black. He 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Stared at it stupidly for a moment and then rec- 
ognised it as the open window. At least, he told 
himself, he could distinguish light from darkness. 
He closed his eyes again to ponder on this mercy. 
He who had always had the eyes of a hawk al- 
most wept for joy to think that he could distin- 
guish a window against a moonlit sky. Presently 
he looked again. High up in one corner of the 
oblong a great star burned. Again he thanked 
high heaven and then noticed with consternation 
that the star was fading. “Pll shut my eyes for 
three minutes,” said he, ^‘then Pll look at it again. 
If iPs gone. Pm a goner too.” He counted sixty 
three fevered times and then looked for his star. 
It was fainter than before but, with a gasp of re- 
lief, he saw the reason. The edge of the moon 
showed in the other corner of the window. 

His exclamation, soft as it had been, reached 
Dorothy. She had spent the night lying wide- 
eyed on her golden bed in her golden room. She 
no longer thought. She had lost the power. Her 
mind was now a desert place across which horrible 
images and imaginations passed or stopped or 
came again without order, without reason, with- 
out control. At first she had tried to comfort her- 
self with the thought that the woman of her hus- 
band’s first love had lived and loved and suffered 


312 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

and died while she was a child at Edgecombe. 
But gradually this idea lost its power to console. 
To understand all might be to forgive all, but she 
knew so little, nothing but what old Mrs. Moran 
had told her, what John had hinted at, what Pat 
had tacitly admitted. ‘‘A small dark little girl,” 
Mrs. Moran had said, ‘^with little hands and little 
feet.” Then quick upon this thought came an- 
other — the saying of another old woman: ‘‘The 
Greshams are a bad lot, my dear. Go to the 
picture gallery; look at the women who loved and 
trusted.” Then, “You know this address if you 
ever want me,” and John’s “Better go home to 
America and arrange matters from there.” How 
could she arrange a life with no Pat in it! 

She watched the moon as it passed across her 
windows, and until she heard, or thought she 
heard, a sound in Pat’s room. 

When Pat had quite identified the moon he 
closed his eyes once more. “A blind man could 
see that,” he told himself. “I’ll try the furniture, 
the wall-paper.” 

He easily distinguished familiar chairs and then 
thought he detected a movement at the door which 
separated his room from Dot’s. The moonlight 
struck it fairly. A tall white door showing a 
little slice of sweet darkness beyond it; sweet be- 

313 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

cause it held his wife. The door moved yet a little 
more and he saw that a hand was on it; the hand 
was followed by a soft round arm; then came some 
lace, then a hanging sleeve of golden satin, and 
then Dot, his own incomparable Dot, slipped into 
the moonlight and stood there listening. No mem- 
ory of her had ever been so lovely as this reality. 

Yet was this Dot? He had not seen her for 
more than three weeks. Then she had been 
radiant, but this woman in the doorway, was she 
the same Dot ? The slight straight figure was the 
same, the heavy hair which fell almost to her 
knees was the same, the fair neck which rose out 
of the lace held upon her breast by a long blue 
ribbon, the shapely arms, the little bare feet. 
Yes! these were all the same. But the face 
framed by that dusky hair was different, and it 
was this difference that kept him from springing 
up and calling to her. Her mouth and great dark 
eyes were full of haunting questions; she looked 
at once older and more childish. For an instant 
he marvelled and then understood. Of course 
she had been breaking her loving heart about 
him ! And now it wouldn’t do to tell her too sud- 
denly that her misery had been unnecessary, that 
its cause was gone. She stood perfectly silent, 
perfectly still, and then as if dissatisfied or puzzled, 

314 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

she put up her hands and lifted the heavy hair 
from her ears. Still Pat made no sound, but not 
quite reassured, she crossed the room to the dark 
cavern of his bed and stood close to him. She 
was only a silhouette now against the lighted win- 
dow. 

‘‘Sweetheart,” said he as steadily as he could 
manage it. 

She stretched out her hand to arrange the covers 
about his shoulders. He caught the hand and 
kissed it. How had he known it was there, she 
wondered, and laid her other hand upon his head. 
Instead of the harsh bandage she felt his hair. 

“Oh, what have you done?” she whispered. 

“ Pve made a discovery,” he answered. “ I took 
off the bandage, and I can see. Do you under- 
stand, my sweetheart, I can see, see, see.” 


315 


CHAPTER XLIX 


O H, what do you think ?” cried the countess, 
coming down into the big hall where the 
exiles from Edgecombe were gathered together. 
“Pat is coming to dinner/’ 

“Not really?” cried her mother. 

“Yes, really,” she made happy answer. “Mc- 
Birney was here while you were out. He verified 
Pat’s own opinion about his sight, says that with 
care he’ll be as well as ever in a week or two. Of 
course, he’s still in bandages, but he thinks he’d 
like to be with us this evening. He wants to talk 
to Abraham and to you, Matilda, dear.” 

Matilda was rather overwhelmed. The glories 
of Dorothy Forbes and her earl husband was the 
favourite myth of Edgecombe. Matilda, though 
she had often observed him from afar during his 
visit to The House, and though she had been 
present at the wedding, had yet never been for- 
mally presented to him, and the sudden immi- 
nence of him surrounded by romance and ban- 
dages was rather alarming. Abraham suffered no 
such palpitations. 


316 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

That’s good,” he made reply to Dot’s infor- 
mation. '‘I’ll be real pleased to see him again. 
I always told folks at home that he was a real nice 
feller — for an earl. I guess he was more friendly 
with me than with any one else in town. Sort of 
felt that I was wide awake and coming, don’t you 
know.” 

The presence of Pat at the head of the table 
so upset Rose Matilda that she could eat noth- 
ing. She said less. But Pat devoted himself so 
gently to her reassurance that she presently felt 
strength of mind enough to reply to his inquiries 
for the health of the parrot and of Mrs. Petty, 
Samantha and Reuben Sands. 

“ Say,” Mr. Petty broke out from the other end 
of the table, “do you know that that automatic 
piano-player you sent mother from New York just 
tickled her to death. She joined a library for 
records and there she sits playing them for her- 
self as happy as a bed-bug.” 

A slight halt in the conversation punctuated his 
last words. Maloney’s face seemed to suggest 
that Mr. Petty should instantly be cast out into 
the night, but that complete during-dinner speaker 
had several other conversational bomb-shells in re- 
serve, and the butler, receiving no further orders, 
withdrew, disgruntled, to the sideboard. 

317 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Say!’’ said Mr. Petty, when the silence which 
he had himself created had lasted long enough. 
“ Say I Did any one ever tell ye that you two look 
alike?” 

“It has been noticed once or twice,” John 
Gresham answered. 

“Well, it’s so,” said Petty. “You certainly do 
look alike. Twins, be ye ?” 

“Twins,” answered John. 

“Well, say,” said Abraham Petty, “do tell! 
You know I’d hate to be a twin,” he went on, 
“must of sort of make ye feel funny, ‘you don’t 
know who ye are’ kind of feeling.” 

“And yet,” said John Gresham very quietly, 
“that is a selfish view to take of it. Think what 
the world would gain, Mr. Petty, if there had 
been another of you!” 

“That’s all right, of course,” Petty agreed. 
“But, say, there’s another thing I noticed — about 
this likeness, I mean.” But John would have 
none of him, and it was Pat who courteously came 
to the rescue. 

“And what’s that?” he asked. 

“It’s about them kids of yours,” answered 
Abraham. This time he was flattered by the 
complete attention of every one in the room. He 
had gaily and instinctively opened the most im- 

318 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

possible of all topics. No one had the courage 
or the resource to take it away from him, and so 
he pranced triumphantly on. ‘‘I saw them kids 
in the garden this morning, and they looked so 
much alike that I had to ask the nurse girl which 
was Dot’s baby. And I says to Matilda, ‘They 
might be twins, they look so much alike.’ ” 

It was well for Mr. Petty that he required very 
little encouragement from his auditors. He cer- 
tainly received none. If he had looked at John 
he might have been surprised into stopping, for 
John’s expression was one not often worn at din- 
ner tables. But he did not look. “Of course,” 
he went on, “Dot’s boy is a little shorter than 
the other, but he’s just as stocky as the other 
one. Is there much difference between them 
How old is your boy, anyway?” he questioned, 
looking at last toward John. 

The silence produced by Mr. Petty’s earlier re- 
mark was as nothing compared with that which 
followed this. Every face in the room turned 
toward John, who, ashen-gray, looked only at 
Dorothy. And every face held varying shades of 
the same enlightenment. Petty, the incorrigible, 
grotesque, almost idiotic Petty, had stumbled upon 
the truth which had eluded their more complex 
and over-anxious searching. For it was the truth, 

319 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

the simple patent truth; no one looking at John 
and at Pat could doubt it; and Pat, concerned only 
for his brother’s embarrassment, was the first to 
speak. 

“About four years old,” said he, thinking that 
the simple truth might satisfy and silence Mr. Petty. 

It was as well that he could not see his audience. 
Dorothy was lying back in her chair, radiant with 
relief. 

Mrs. Forbes was beaming though puzzled. 
But Mr. Forbes was in a black towering rage, and 
his anger was aroused almost as much by his own 
stupidity as by the treachery of John Gresham. 
Matilda Petty felt that she was in the presence of a 
psychic thunder-storm and cowered in her place. 
Mr. Petty felt nothing at all, except that he had 
attracted the attention of his host, and so having 
acted the part of Nemesis in John’s behalf, he 
was quite ready to turn his attention to Pat’s 
leading question: 

“And what do you think of Ireland, Mr. Petty ?” 

“I can’t say I think much of it,” said Mr. Petty 
sadly as one knowing and regretting that his opin- 
ion must sadden and humiliate his host. “We 
have rode around considerable in your automobile 
and it certainly seems to me that Ireland is a hun- 
dred years back of the world in hardware.” 

320 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

For the succeeding five minutes the conversa- 
tion bristled with mowing-machines, harvesters 
and other agricultural hardware. 

Then the other members of the party were able 
to gather their scattered wits and vocabularies and 
Mr. Petty got another chance. The empty place 
upon Dot’s right puzzled him. This was the first 
evening upon which he had seen the whole house- 
hold gathered about the table. And still there 
was an empty place, Throughout the dinner he 
had momentarily expected some still unintro- 
duced member of the household to come and 
claim it. Carefully reviewing the facts as he saw 
them, he arrived at the identity of the absentee, 
and forged another conversational bomb-shell. 
Nodding at the empty place, he remarked pleas- 
antly to John: 

“ I guess your wife ain’t coming to supper; don’t 
she feel well 

Without answering, without looking at any one, 
John stood up, went into the oak room and shut 
the door behind him. 

“Mr. Petty,” said the earl, “you are most unfor- 
tunate in your topics of conversation. Mrs. John 
Gresham died two months after the birth of her 
boy. It is a subject which is never mentioned and 
I must ask you to follow this rule.” 

321 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Sure,” said Petty pleasantly. ‘*1 don’t want 
to be digging up no one’s feelings and then hurt- 
ing them. Maybe I’d better go and tell him so.” 

‘‘You had better not, Abraham,” said Mr. 
Forbes. “I’m going to have a little talk with him 
and I’ll tell him for you.” 


322 


CHAPTER L 


J OHN GRESHAM was brooding gloomily over 
the fire in the oak room when Forbes entered 
noiselessly and locked the door behind him. 

“Get out of this,” John growled, without turn- 
ing. “ I sha’n’t want you to-night. Go and grovel 
before “The Vulgarians.” 

“It’s not Burke,” said Forbes. “I’ve been 
talking with my daughter and I’ve come to let 
you know what we’ve decided.” 

“As to my punishment ?” sneered John. “Who 
made you my judges, and how are you going to 
enforce your penalty?” 

He had left the fire as he spoke and crossed to 
the table. Forbes drew a short-barrelled, stumpy 
revolver from his hip pocket and laid it on the 
table between them. 

“Ah!” snarled Gresham, “so you do conde- 
scend to firearms. I understood that you killed 
with your bare hands.” 

“Not vermin,” said Forbes quietly. “And of 
all the vermin that God allows to crawl between 
heaven and hell you are the dirtiest.” 

323 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

John’s face grew livid and he sprang at his ad- 
versary, but returned to his place and dropped 
into his chair when he met the muzzle of the 
stumpy revolver. 

‘"Stay there,” said Forbes. “There’s no good 
in hopping around. This little daisy has got one 
of those noiseless, smokeless Maxim attachments. 
I’m trying it out. It seems to work all right. 
Well, now get to business. Of course you get off 
this place by sunup. That’s number one. And 
you don’t say one identical word to Pat.” 

“How much does Pat know?” John ques- 
tioned. 

“Nothing except that Dorothy and you made 
friends while he was in London, that you told her 
about your son and that she stands willing to 
adopt him if Pat agrees. Of course he does. He’s 
a fool. Nothing of your breed could be good for 
anything but drowning.” 

John stirred uneasily in his place but Forbes 
went on: 

“That’s what he thinks. And that’s what he’s 
going to think, according to Dorothy’s wish. He’s 
never going to know. But I know, and I’m going 
to revive your memory. You’ve stolen ” 

John sprang to his feet. 

“Ah! set down. I’m telling you nothing you 
324 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

don’t know — stolen estate money. Thousands 
of it.” 

“How do you know?” snarled John. 

“ Banks,” answered Forbes. “ I went to Scotland 
Yard and they agreed with me that you’d bear 
looking into, all most confidential, of course.” 

“ Scotland Y ard ! ” repeated John. “You dared 
to discuss me in Scotland Yard ?” 

“ I don’t know why not. I may have to be send- 
ing for some of them to come down and call. 
Well, after that it was easy enough. I told you I 
had letters of introduction to bankers in London 
and Dublin. That’s what I was doing when I 
went to London. When you go around to those 
banks maybe you won’t find yourself just as pop- 
ular as pay-day. I had nothing to do with that. 
They were grouchy right from the start. Said 
you gave them more book-keeping to do than ten 
other clients called for. Then,” he went on, 
“stealing not being enough, you go and under- 
take to kill Dorothy on that buck-jumper of yours 
— oh ! you needn’t bother to look indignant — I had 
a talk with the men afterward. This is the one 
thing on the list that Dorothy don’t know about. 
Then comes that dastardly trick about Michael. 
I don’t know as I ever before met up with a man 
who would use his dead wife’s child to ruin his 


325 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

brother’s home, and I was sheriff in my home 
county for ten years, and I saw quite some of the 
wrong side of human nature. Then when you 
know the fix-up you get ready for your brother 
and know that he is coming home to it, that you 
can’t stop him ” 

“How could I know?” sneered John. 

“By the telegram you suppressed. I got it out 
of that creature of yours down to the telegraph 
office. 

“You lie,” said John. “There was no tele- 
gram.” 

“You’re mistaken,” said Forbes. “Here’s the 
carbon copy. I got it out of him easy enough. 
I just twisted the top of him toward the east and 
the rest of him toward the west until I restored his 
memory. So then you knew the earl was coming 
home, a man that almost makes a woman of 
himself about you and your darned feelings — the 
only living creature in the world that doesn’t wish 
you were dead. And you’re afraid of him, and 
you take a gun and go out to shoot him in the 
dark.” 

“Never,” shrieked John, springing up again. 
“You can’t prove it.” 

“We don’t have to. We know it.” 

“Who knows it? Who dares to say it?” 

326 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Mother,” answered Forbes quietly. “She’s 
the first.” 

''Mrs. Forbes,” repeated Gresham in blankest 
amazement. “Mrs. Forbes!” 

“Yes, mother. That time I was sheriff* she used 
to be down to the gaol a lot talking to the boys, 
and she got so she could pick out what they were 
in trouble for before I had a chance to tell her. 
And that night when you came out of this room 
so calm and smiling in your dancing shoes, mother 
touches my arm and says, ‘That’s the man. Don’t 
you see the old murder look.?’ Then she talked 
with young Burke — fooled him into thinking that 
we all knew — and he gave up his part of the story. 
That’s a nice list of activities Mr. The Honoura- 
ble John Gresham. Now get active just once 
more and hustle off this place. You needn’t 
bother about the money you stole. I’ve fixed that 
with the bankers. All you’ve got to do it to g-i-t 
git — and stay.” 

“And leave you all here to enjoy the work of 
my hands, the gardens I designed, the house I 
restored and made habitable; to rest under the 
trees I planted; to drive about the roads and 
avenues I laid out. Even the horses and the cat- 
tle on the hills are of my choosing; the pheasants 
of my raising. The plantations of my design. 

327 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

This was my life and work when you and your 
daughter had never heard of such a place, and 
when Pat cared so little about it that years went 
by without his ever coming here. And then be- 
cause it suits his damned convenience Pat comes 
back and gathers all of you around him and treats 
me — oh! that cursed five minutes — like a bailiff. 
Oh, it’s a sweet life and yet, Mr. Forbes, I’m not 
going. You can tell your daughter what you 
please. Tell the earl what you please. In fact, 
you can do anything you please. This is my 
house, my place. I made them.” 

“They would be in America,” answered Forbes; 
“at least a fair share of them would; but your 
British law is different, and you’re only talking 
wild. Pat could have you chucked out through 
the big gate like you was a stray pig. You can’t 
put up no fight; and the reason that my daughter 
and I are giving you a chance to get away is that 
we realise just how you feel. Pat might have 
married anybody, but he did marry my daughter 
and she and her boy did break into your chances. 
There’s nothing to do about it. The laws of na- 
ture and the laws of the land work on and you get 
shoved out. As I say, we understand your feelings 
and we’re sorry — good and sorry — that it happened 
to be us that broke your life. But what we don’t 
328 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

understand is the way those feelings led you to 
act. Embezzlement, gross deception, bad faith, 
murder and general all-round meanness don’t seem 
natural symptoms to us. And that’s the reason 
I’m telling you — for I’ve got the safety of this 
household on my hands until Pat is well — that’s 
the reason I’m telling you you’ve got to be off this 
place by sunup. If I find you here afterward 
there may be an accident.” 

“Good night,” said Gresham. “I shall see 
you at breakfast.” 

“I’m afraid not,” said Forbes. “I guess you’ll 
be starting out one way or another quite a while 
before that. I’ll see you later. I’ll sit outside by 
the fire in the hall until you’re ready to start and 
I’ll see that you get off all right.” 


329 


CHAPTER LI 


N ever was a relief expedition treated with 
less gratitude than the garrison at Glen- 
daire showed to their young David from over-seas. 
They had been besieged by doubt and despair 
while disgrace threatened them from the horizon. 
And behold Abraham Petty — armed metaphori- 
cally with his sling and his stone — had overcome 
their Goliath and had set them free. 

“Stupid ass/’ was Pat’s verdict — Pat whom he 
had most of all served. 

“But he doesn’t mean any harm,” Dot remon- 
strated. Dot knew the fear from which she had 
been rescued, though Pat did not. 

“I only wish he did,” her husband answered. 
“If he had done it deliberately, one could break 
his back, you know. Think of a snipe like that 
badgering a man like John; it’s preposterous! 
It’s bad enough to have suffered as John has with- 
out being talked to about it. Wasn’t it awful. 
Dot? How did the poor chap look?” 

“He looked,” she answered, “very much dis- 
turbed, as, of course, he would.” 

330 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“What a life he has had!** cried Pat. “I was 
away, you know, when the thing happened. I 
never even saw the poor girl he married. It was 
an awful mistake from beginning to end. I think 
he always felt it to be so; and now, just when 
you*ve taken the child and he might be a little 
happy about it, along comes this idiot!*’ 

They were out upon the terrace. Dorothy had 
led Pat to the marble bench upon which she and 
Mrs. Moran had held their interview. She sat 
silently beside him for a few minutes. There are 
some emotions which escape all words. 

“How does it all look.?** he asked. “Is there 
a sunset .? I shall see it for myself in a day or two; 
but oh, Dorothy, think of what I have escaped!** 

So she told him all the beauty of the place. 
It had grown even dearer to him since it had be- 
come her home. She told him of the long shadows 
on the grass, the pink clouds reflected in the gray- 
green lake, the soft, purple haze upon the moun- 
tain. Then she came back to John again. 

“Does Renira Banbridge know?** she asked. 

“I think not. I cannot be sure, but I think 
not.” 

“He should have told her. She will have to 
know it now. I fear it will be an awful shock to 
her unless she has suspected.” 

331 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“Fm afraid/’ said Pat, ‘‘that she hasn’t. 
Women don’t easily suspect the men they love. 
There is no love, you know, without perfect faith.” 

“Ah! but there is. The greatest love. To 
honour what every one honours, to admire what 
every one admires, to cherish what every one de- 
sires, all these one can do without love. But to 
honour through shame, to admire through doubt, 
to cherish through disgrace, those are the tests of 
love.” 

“And do you think he asked, “that if I had 
kept some secret like this from you that you could 
have gone on loving me after you had discovered 
it.?” 

“I could,” she answered, with full conviction. 
“Indeed and indeed I could!” 

“ Indeed and indeed I believe it,” he answered. 
“It’s a pity I haven’t some horrible past for you 
to practise on! But I’m afraid, darling, that 
you’ll have to go on loving me for no better reason 
than that I adore you. Now, we won’t be tragic 
any more. Tell me again how the mountain 
looks. Is it getting much darker yet? What a 
wonderful thing life is, my dear! And how good 
it was of Providence — or evolution — to give us 
eyes! I grudge the loss of mine even for these 
few days. You’re a wonderful interpreter, but I 
332 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

can’t help feeling sometimes that Fm missing 
things a bit — getting out of step, as it were, with 
the march of events.” 

Dorothy, as she made some laughing reply, was 
very conscious of her forced disloyalty; yet how 
could she tell him anything without telling him of 
everything, and that was, of course, impossible. 
One of Pat’s securest anchors was his love for 
John. It would be impossible to touch that with- 
out uprooting it utterly, and what had she to 
offer in exchange Nothing! Once or twice she 
had seen Pat’s anger. To bring that overwhelm- 
ing, unreasoning and irresponsible force to bear 
upon an irresponsible madman would be almost 
premeditated murder. 

It was partly to prevent this that she and her 
father had agreed upon the immediate banishment 
of John Gresham. 


333 


CHAPTER LII 


F ORBES’S vigil began quietly enough. He 
explained to Mrs. Forbes that John was ill 
and that he was going to take care of him. Dor- 
othy required no explanation, and as soon as Pat 
was securely asleep she crept down to the big 
hall. 

“Well, I swan!” explained Mr. Forbes, as he 
drew a chair for her close to his own before the 
roaring fire, “if it ain’t the ‘Queen of Sheba’ in all 
her glory.” 

“Nonsense, Dad,” laughed Dorothy. “You 
mustn’t talk like that to an old married woman.” 

“Stand off there a bit,” he commanded. “I 
want to look at you. Pat hasn’t had the use of 
his eyes recently, so perhaps nobody has told you 
that you’re a remarkable handsome woman, my 
dear. Did mother ever see you in those gold 
clothes ?” 

“A hundred times, of course,” said Dot. 

“And with your hair in braids like it used to 
be when you were dad’s sure enough little girl ?” 
“Of course, dear.” 


334 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

“And never said one word to me about it. 
Things do seem to get by a fellow.” 

“Come and sit down,” said Dot. “I want 
to talk to you. What have you done about 

John r 

“ Tve given him till sunup to get off the place,” 
said he. 

“What did he say?” she questioned. 

“That he’s not going. That he’ll meet us all 
at breakfast.” 

“Oh, Dad!” cried Dorothy miserably. “What 
are we going to do?” 

“Well, daughter, I might as well admit that I 
don’t know. But I hope he won’t put it up to me. 
He’s sick and he’s crazy and I ain’t accustomed to 
handling that kind. I’m counting on his nerve 
breaking dovm. This storm that’s blowing up 
ought to help some. I was out looking at the sky 
a while back and if I don’t miss my guess it’s 
going to be a rouser.” 

“It’s a rouser now,” said Dorothy crouching 
closer to him. “These storms make me perfectly 
miserable.” 

“About your Christmas tree?” asked her fa- 
ther, and Dot admitted ruefully that it was the 
prophetic yew which troubled her. 

“ It is tearing and throwing itself about as if it 
335 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

was in agony/’ she said. “I’ve been looking out 
at it from my window.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t worry, honeybunch. I guess 
this ain’t the first storm nor the worst storm that 
the old chap has come through.” 

There was silence for some space, and then she 
spoke again. 

“Daddy, dear, can we drive John — a sick man, 
dear — out into such a night?” 

“Just the kind of night to match his conscience.” 

“And then if he sticks to his word and doesn’t 
go before sunup, what are you going to do to 
him ? You haven’t told me that yet.” 

Her father put his hand in his pocket and pro- 
duced a pair of smooth steel handcuffs. 

“These and the police. We’re out of it then. 
We gave him his chance, and Pat will have to 
stand what he gets. It ain’t going to kill Pat — 
we all baby him too much. He wouldn’t stand 
for it if he knew it. Why, I know men that had 
things just as bad — ^yes, an’ worse — proved against 
their wives and they got over it. So will Pat with 
you to help him. And anyway this house has 
been on the crazy list long enough. Something 
has got to be done and I propose to do it. I’ll sit 
here till he comes out and then I’ll help him all 
I can to get started off. He’ll get a good start, for 
336 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

they won’t really begin to fuss about him until 
dinner to-morrow night. And even then nobody 
is going to chase after him. They ain’t going to 
know they ought to. I guess he’ll go all right.” 

“Well,” said Dorothy, with troubled eyes fixed 
on the door of the oak room, “I wish it was all 
over. Do you know that he has two bottles of 
whiskey and ever so much morphine and a syringe 
in there with him ? Pierre told me.” 

“Looks bad,” said Forbes. “Guess he knows 
one of them fits isn’t far off. Now, daughter, you 
go back to Pat. I’ll run things down here, and 
if you’re awake come sunup, you can slide down 
and hear what’s doing.” 

It was barely peep of day when Dorothy came 
back. Forbes was ready for her and together 
they crossed to the door of the oak room. 

“ Let me speak to him for a moment before you 
put those things on,” pleaded Dorothy. “Per- 
haps I can find some word to make him go.” 

The handle yielded easily, and the door opened 
upon an absolutely empty room. 


337 


CHAPTER LIII 


HEN Dorothy went back to her room, she 



T T did at last fall asleep. John was gone. 
The relief of it was overpowering. She was too 
tired to think of the strangeness of his going. 
Pat gave orders that she was not to be disturbed, 
and so she slept on and did not appear at break- 


fast. 


That meal would have been a doleful affair 
save for the jocund presence of Mr. Petty. No 
storm, he boasted could disturb him, and then 
wrung blushing corroboration from Rose Matilda. 

“Where is Dot?’’ he asked pleasantly. 

“Asleep,” said the earl. “She was very restless 
all night.” 

“And where’s Mr. John ?” 

“Probably out about the place seeing what the 
storm did to us. If it weren’t for these bally 
bandages I’d be with him. He’ll be in soon, and 
then we’ll know all about it. I’m afraid it hit the 
young plantations rather hard.” 

But they had not to wait for John’s return to 
hear of one calamity. Dorothy, still in her golden 


338 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

draperies, flashed down the stairs and to Pat’s 
side. 

“Oh, my dear,” she wailed, “the yew! the poor 
old yew! I looked out as soon as I woke and ” 

“It’s not down?” demanded Pat. 

“Not altogether, but a great branch is torn off. 
And oh, Pat! It means something. It must 
mean something.” 

“Well, it can’t mean anything very bad,” Pat 
reassured her. “I’m as fit as a fiddle, and I heard 
the two boys roaring in the garden most reassur- 
ingly. And as for John, of course he s all right.” 

But as the morning progressed, Pat became a 
little less sure. Dr. McBirney came down from 
Dublin, removed the bandages and pronounced 
the recovery to be complete. 

“And not a minute too soon,” said Pat. “If 
ever a man wanted his eyes I’m the chap this day.” 

There were mutual congratulations and felici- 
tations, and then Pat ordered a horse to be brought 
round. 

“This is a queer thing about John,” he said to 
Dorothy. “Somehow I don’t like it, but before 
we stir up the servants. I’ll ride over to the Mon- 
astery and see if he is with Renira. By the way, 
dear, they tell me that the branch that was knocked 
off the yew was all rotten and hollow and that 
339 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

the tree will be much better without it. So that’s 
one worry off your dear old mind. Now I’m off. 
Oh, but it’s ripping to be alive again.” 

He found Sir Richard in his study in a most 
irascible temper. 

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said peering through 
the dusk. “Well, and how are things going? 
Papa-in-law killed anything yet? Dear brother 
going on well ? By the way, why don’t you go in 
for poison ? Shooting is so messy.” 

“I’m Pat,” said the tall figure quietly, “and I 
don’t think I understand you.” 

“Then what the devil,” cried Banbridge, furi- 
ously angry, “do you mean by slinking in here 
and pretending to be your brother?” 

“I came over,” Pat answered, putting a fierce 
control over himself, “to see if John was here.” 

“Well, he isn’t and he hasn’t been here to-day.” 

“Were your opening remarks,” said Pat slowly, 
“meant for John?” 

“They weren’t meant at all,” said Banbridge. 
“Sit down and have a drink and then you can 
amble off up the glen to look for your precious 
brother. I doubt if you’ll find him short of the 
constabulary barracks.” 

“The constabulary barracks?” Pat repeated. 

“Yes. The people were slow enough about 
340 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

evidence when their own fellows were suspected 
and accused, but now that they’ve sent a chap 
from Dublin and he begins to suspect John then 
the amount of evidence is overwhelming. I had 
an hour of it this morning.” 

^‘What are you talking about?” demanded Pat. 
“What is John suspected of?” 

“It’s beyond suspicion,” said Banbridge. “I 
knew it at the time from his manner. It was he 
who shot you.” 

“You lie,” roared Pat and struck him in the 
mouth. 

“You fool,” said Banbridge, “you shall ac- 
count for that blow presently, but now you’ll hear 
about John. I don’t know the full list of his 
trickery, but what I do know I’ll tell you. He 
shot you. Ever since your marriage he has sys- 
tematically cheated the estate. He’s raised the 
rents to impossible heights and has made no 
difference in the books. But it was when you 
were in London that he really enjoyed himself. 
His idea was to get rid of the countess, the young 
viscount and all the rest — to drive them back to 
America before your return. So he got that 
child of his from over the mountain and intro- 
duced him to your wife as yours. He thought 
that would surely start them. But the countess 
341 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

closed on the kid and he was dished. That’s 
the reason he tried to kill you.” 

Pat was striding up and down the room. ‘‘ Re- 
member,” he thundered, '‘I don’t believe a word 
of your foul story. But if it should be true — I’m 
going home to investigate — then you’ll not see 
your friend John Gresham very often after this. 
Will you ring for my horse.” 

“There is one more thing,” said Banbridge. 
“Again, while you were in London he let the 
countess mount that horse Thunderbolt. She 
would have been dashed to pieces in the stable 
yard if it had not been for her father, that wild 
man; he saved her life.” 

“My horse?” demanded Pat. “My horse?” 


342 


CHAPTER LIV 


T he early twilight was closing in as the Earl 
of Glamoran rode home to his castle, and 
as he went all that was boy in him died out, for 
he knew, despite all his efforts at self-deception, 
that some, at least, of what Banbridge had said 
was true. 

A dull rage burned in him and at times flashed 
up into a curse. Cheated, on every hand, by 
every one. Dorothy, his wife, was the worst 
offender. And then justice awoke in him. He 
remembered that he himself had forbidden all 
mention of his brother’s shortcomings, had shown 
her that in some regards John was more to him 
than she could ever be. 

And Forbes ? Forbes had warned him too. 
And he had seen and disregarded a thousand in- 
cidents of mismanagement and cruelty among the 
tenants. Clearly now he recalled that old, old 
incident of Mrs. Mulready. There was his en- 
lightenment. Dot held it up to him, and he 
refused to see. 

And his mother: in season and out of season 
she had warned him. 


343 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

And he, a bally fool, played tennis, while the 
sun shone, and let the wrongs go on. 

At last he came in sight of his home. The 
southern wing was all lit up. There were the 
nurseries and Dot’s rooms. He quivered when he 
thought of the dearness of what they held, and 
his face hardened when he thought of Thunder- 
bolt. 

A groom came running up, saw the altered 
face above him and touched his hat. 

“Good evening, Mr. Gresham,” he ventured. 

Pat looked at him stolidly, then turned and 
mounted the steps. 

“The master’s worse than ever,” the groom 
reported at the stables. 

The great hall was empty. So were the billiard- 
room and the drawing-room. But, in the library, 
Dorothy was standing before the big fire with her 
hands on the mantel-piece and one small shoe 
toasting on the fender. She turned at Pat’s en- 
trance, looked at his wild and ravaged face and 
with a cry of “John! go! too late!” she fell flat 
upon the hearth-rug in the first and only faint of 
her career. 

Pat sprang to her and as he did so he saw his 
haggard face in the mirror, and thought that 
John was behind him. He wheeled about. The 
344 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

room was empty. He turned back to the mirror 
and realised that the face was his. And as he 
gathered his wife into his arms prepared to carry 
her up-stairs, he muttered: 

“No necessity for asking her anything. Poor 
little girl, she’s given her evidence in full. Fainted 
dead away when she thought she saw him. Dot! 
my plucky, fearless Dot.” 

He carried her to her mother, and they soon 
restored her, and then Pat went in search of 
Forbes. 

He found him knocking the balls about the 
billiard table. Forbes glanced up as Pat came in. 

“Well, son,” said he, “who told you?” 

“Banbridge.” 

Forbes nodded. “Just like the dirty skunk.” 

“Was he right?” 

“I guess so, as far as he got. Of course he 
don’t know it all. I doubt if anybody ever will.” 

“Where is he,” demanded Pat savagely. “Oh, 
where is he ?” 

“That’s more than I can say,” Forbes an- 
swered. “I gave him until sunup this morning 
to get away from here. He seems to be gone. 
I’m darned if I know how he went. I left him 
in his room and sat outside all night. He never 
came out, and when I went into the room at sun- 
345 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

up he was gone. And a good thing, too,’’ he 
added, as he looked at Pat’s altered face. ‘^If 
you could get at him now you’d do something 
you’d be sorry for later on.” 

Pat dashed off at a tangent. ‘‘And you’ve all 
been deceiving me, treating me like a boy, a 
child.” 

“Well,” said Forbes, “you’ve been behaving 
like a boy. Fooling around with your tennis, 
your four-in-hand and one thing and another. 
Leaving your work in life to another man and 
never seeing how he did it. And, besides, it was 
Dorothy’s wish that her coming shouldn’t sepa- 
rate you two brothers.” 

“Oh, where is he.? Where is he! If I could 
only find the beast. I’ll go out again. I’ll go to 
some of the other neighbours and see if they have 
news of him.” 

As he opened the door, the long, wailing note of 
a blood-hound caught his attention and he real- 
ised that he had been hearing it ever since he en- 
tered the house. 

“What the devil is that?” he demanded of 
Forbes. 

“That’s Pluto. He’s been carrying on like 
that for hours. Cheerful ain’t it? Nothing can 
budge him and nothing can make him stop.” 

346 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

Pat went to the oak room and found the discon- 
solate Pluto howling and whining with his nose 
to one spot in the wainscotting. At sight of the 
earl his whines changed to yelps of entreaty. 
Forbes had followed Pat and now he spoke. 

‘‘That’s the way he carries on every time any- 
body comes into the room. What do you suppose 
is the matter with him?” 

“We’ll soon see,” said Pat. “There’s an old 
secret passage here and Pluto is evidently sus- 
picious of it. Stand back a bit till I see if I remem- 
ber the combinations. John and I used it often 
and often when we were youngsters.” 

At this reminiscence the realisation of his wrongs 
struck him freshly. ‘‘I oughtn’t to be here,” said 
he. “I ought to be out looking for him. And 
when I find him — oh, well, threats are nothing.” 

He made one or two false attempts at finding the 
secret combination. Pluto meanwhile was sniff- 
ing and whining more busily than ever, and when 
at last Pat mastered the problem and the door 
slid back, then Pluto sprang into the darkness. 
An instant later he gave a long and terrible wail. 
The two men looked at one another. Pat lighted 
one of the candles on the mantel-piece and holding 
it high in the dark, twisting passage they followed 
the dog. 


347 


Her Little Young Ladyship 

And half-way along the passage, half-way to 
freedom and such a life as remained to him, they 
came upon the body of John Gresham, hideously 
huddled together and lying on the stone floor. 
His most relentless enemy had caught him there, 
and in the dark he had struggled against and 
been conquered by the lit which had been sure 
to follow upon his late intemperance and excite- 
ment. 

Pat held the candle close to the ghastly, distorted 
face, then turned to Forbes. 

‘‘Dead,” said he; “cheated me even of revenge.” 

“You will live,” said Forbes, “to thank God 
for that.” 


f 


348 



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